Gwen Stacy's Detective Service
by abresch
Summary: Gwen Stacy is an enterprising high-school student who supplements her income with some work as a private investigator. Shortly after she starts dating Peter Parker, she spots a new super-hero, and her tendency to uncover secrets swiftly uncovers that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Gwen decides to use her prowess to help him track down and deal with super-villains.
1. Ground Rules

_Author's Note:_

 _I write these stories more as novellas than individual chapters, although the chapters are meant to stand alone somewhat, more so in the first installment than the second. If you're new to this, Chapters 1-4 are the first book, chapters 5-9 are the second._

 _I hope you enjoy reading._

* * *

Lunch at Two-Oh-Eight was busy, as usual. Gwen sat at her spacious table, off to the side of the cafeteria. Her feet were kicked up on an adjacent chair, which was fine because the rest of the room was all crowded together, while there were only two at her table-for-eight. She paid her compatriots slightly more mind than the rest of the school, but most of her attention was for the ham-and-cheese she was working on.

"Too much mustard," she declared.

"What was that?" Peter said, looking up.

"The sandwich, silly."

"Oh." Peter was, as ever, distracted. "Too much mustard?"

"It was made with love, but also with too much mustard."

"Gwen," Peter pointed out, "you complain about having to make your own sandwiches everyday."

She took her feet from the chair so she could turn to face him. "Doesn't mean it wasn't made with love. A girl can love herself. I can prove it."

Peter twitched his eyes back down to his book. Gwen snatched it out of his hands, which finally got a proper reaction.

"Hey!" he said, glaring.

She looked over the page he was on. "Why are you reading up on genetic recombination?"

"The sit-down with Mr. Orborne that we won and you decided to miss out on. I'm still thinking about what I, uh, ran into there."

Gwen shrugged. "I was busy. Speaking of which..."

She half-stood, looking around the place. It didn't really require a hard look, but she gave one anyway. Either Flash would be obvious or he wouldn't be there, and Harry would be with Flash. As it turned out, he wasn't there, and then he was obviously walking in through one of the doors with a crowd of cheerleaders and meatheads.

He walked past their table and stopped. "Still hanging with The Brain, Gwen?"

"I'm sorry, were you looking for something other than, 'Obviously yes?' I'm sorry, we can't all share your interest in dimwits."

Flash glared as he always did when stymied like that, but he recovered quickly. "You know, there's more to life than just good grades, babe."

Gwen rolled her eyes, and Flash and his buddies kept going. Except for one. Harry spun a chair around and settled onto it, arms crossed on the back. "You know, some people are both intelligent and wealthy. The two aren't mutually exclusive."

Flash gave a glance back, but Harry waved him off. He may have been a part of Flash's clique, but Harry generally did as he pleased. One of the benefits of staggering wealth.

Peter closed his book and looked sick as he stood, saying he'd rather go. He hadn't even finished his meal. Gwen resisted her urge to kick Harry in the shins, being as she was working.

Once they were alone, Harry's expression tightened, his confidence sliding into worry. Gwen pulled out her notepad, down on her knee so nobody at another table would see, and got ready to write. "Well, what did you want? Some girl you want looked into?"

Harry was her best customer. He wasn't confident enough to just introduce himself to a girl if he knew nothing about her, which meant he paid well for some background, and background on people was basically the easiest bit of investigation the world offered. It was a bit stalker-y, but Gwen had decided she was fine with it. She charged an extra twenty-percent as a moral-discomfort premium.

"No, not that. I mean, yes, but not like that. So, I've been kinda getting somewhat serious with Mary-Jane."

Gwen nodded. "Yeah, I gave you a precis on her at the end of summer break. You'd best not break her heart, she's one of the good ones."

"Trust me, I know," he insisted. "Look, this isn't me going after her, I'm just worried. Mary-Jane's been acting odd. She missed a date last saturday. Not cancelled, just missed it entirely, and said she forgot, that she'd been busy. She wouldn't say why, though. That's happened a couple of times. During class, she's been falling asleep. She's never been an amazing student, but she's always been pretty good. Then, last week, I saw her up in Manhattan, looking all stressed out. She ran into the subway and I hate going down there, but when I said something later she lied and said she'd never been there."

"And you think she's stepping out."

"No. She's broke, and stressed out, and moody all the time. I'm just worried she's doing drugs or something."

"Wow. That's actually admirable."

Harry glared. "What, I'm too rich for admirable emotions?"

"Your words. And yes, I'll look into it." She tore off a piece of paper and passed it to him.

"This seems... cheaper than usual." He narrowed his eyes. "I'd best not get cut-rate service."

Gwen struggled not to laugh at him. "Wow, remind me not to do any favors. That's the admirable intentions discount."

"And my usual intentions aren't admirable?"

"No."

"I just want—"

"Don't try."

"But—"

"Seriously."

He sighed. "Whatever. Just get on this, okay?"

"I will. Now go away, before I get caught socializing with you."

"Fine."

Harry headed over to Flash and the gang, and Gwen got to planning her day. It was going to be a long day. Long night, really.

* * *

Long week, as it turned out, but a good one. Amazing, even. She hoped not to find someone hooked on drugs or something like that, and while Mary-Jane wasn't meeting the nicest of people, the truth turned out to be quite benign.

Photos of her going in looking a little nervous and coming out teary-eyed and stressed out seem bad, up until Gwen went into a couple places and realized they were talent agencies. The girl wanted to be a model, but her parents didn't approve and she was still a minor, so she was trying to get a job with a fake ID and a lot of moxie.

Gwen sent her an anonymous email offering a better fake at a reasonable price, as the one Mary-Jane was using really wasn't up to snuff. Gwen almost offered the service free of charge, but then she looked at the specs on her wish-I-had-it computer and decided to just offer the admirable-intentions discount.

That wasn't the amazing part, though. The amazing part came during the last little bit of picture-taking, as Mary-Jane left a talent agency at five in the afternoon. Gwen took a final few shots—she already knew what was going on, but preferred to have more proof rather than less—and then sat back on the bench, hoodie up so Mary-Jane wouldn't notice.

That's when a man when shooting by overhead.

Instinct brought the camera up and Gwen started snapping pictures as quick as she could. Up he went. And up, and up, and up, and gone. She kept looking, camera at the ready, but he didn't reappear. A few other people on the street were looking up, but nobody seemed to know what had happened. Gwen looked for anyone with a cell-phone out, ready to try and get another angle, but was let down. Her pictures would be all she had.

Back home, she started them developing and went to finish up the job for Harry. She did the write-up, double checked all her sources, and then went back to get the photos out. She didn't make any prints, just sent the negatives through the scanner. She wanted to check the shots of the super, but kept her focus on the job at hand. It was almost done, and then she could properly move on.

After adding a few key photos to the file, she emailed it out, along with the final bill. She never made Harry pay in advance the way she did most people. He was always good for it, and it seemed more likely to make him happy.

With that file closed out, Gwen moved on to the potential-new-superhero shots. A man with a read hoodie and ridiculously fashion-less khaki pants went leaping across the street. He landed on a wall and jumped off. He grabbed the side off a lamp-post and flipped to the bar arcing out over the street. He leapt again, high. He landed on the wall and ran. On all fours, he practically ran up the wall. And kept going. He disappeared over the edge of the roof and was gone.

A hundred pictures in those few short seconds. Gwen went through them again, clipping out headshots. She fiddled with blurring and levels, and even dug up an algorithm for enhancement of a form based on other pictures of the same object, but that was a desperate hope. The algorithm really needed a series, or at least pictures from similar angles, and she had almost nothing. In the end, she just marked out a key area and made a print—her scanner couldn't close to match the resolution of a print on a zoomed in portion—showing the line of his jaw and a bit of the profile of his nose.

Not a lot, but a huge scoop at the same time.

Gwen didn't consider herself a hero-chaser; far from it. A new hero, though? The first pictures of a villain? Whatever he turned into, those shots would be something. They could be sold. He scurried up walls and could leap great distances. He had to be new.

She went to hero-stalker forums and sank into the depths of the internet, until finally it was time for another day of school and she hadn't slept. He was new, though; she had done enough digging to be sure of that.

* * *

Gwen sat at the lunch table, lying flat, glaring at her self-made-with-love sandwich. Turkey with cheese, and not enough mustard.

"Are you alright?"

She looked up, surprised to hear concern in Peter's voice. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

Gwen sat up entirely. Two weeks of searching for information about this new hero, of whom she had the first-ever-photos, and she had nothing but exhaustion to show. Well, and an A- on a test, but mostly exhaustion. "You know what fine looks like?"

"You look like you've barely slept. I know what that looks like because I have mirrors in my house."

"My, how persceptive of you," Gwen snapped. He didn't look chastened. She rolled her eyes. "Alright. Fine. I've been working too much. Actually, you don't look so hot yourself."

"Like I said, I know what tired looks like. I was thinking, maybe we could just chill this weekend." He was suddenly looking down, not quite meeting her eyes. "You know, like, take a break from all the, uh, busy stuff—"

"Are you asking me on a date?" Gwen said, suddenly much more wakeful.

"No," he said immediately, his voice strained. "I'm just, you know. Not a date just, maybe a movie, or something."

"Well, if it's JUST a movie, I figure I might as well JUST do something else. Is it, JUST a movie?"

He bit at his lip. "Yeah, just a movie."

"Ugh. You're the smartest idiot around, Peter." Gwen reached out, grabbed his hands, and after an initial tug where he ignored her, she was able to move them. She set them flat on the table between them, so they were both forced to face each other, directly, sitting upright. "Now, repeat after me."

"What?"

"I said, repeat after me, Peter Parker."

"Alright."

She spoke slowly, clearly. "Would you..."

"Huh?"

"You're supposed to repeat it. Now, 'Would you...'"

"Would you..."

"Like to go..."

He paused a moment, but she just stared at him until he continued. "Like to go..."

"On a date with me..."

"On a date with—" He swallowed midword, his voice squeeking. "Gwen—"

"I'd love to, Peter!"

"Uh, you would?"

In her mind, she traced back through the week, to Flash cornering her against the locker while she was too tired to tell him to screw himself, to Tiny telling her she should go see a movie with him, a midnight showing of something violent, and finally to Peter, just worried that she looked tired, that she was overworking herself. "Of course I would."

Besides, he was literally the smartest guy at school, and he had cute eyes. Caring, cute, clever— if he was courageous and strong he'd be five-for-five.

* * *

Gwen sighed. Looking back from the mirror was a properly done-up face. Her hair was curled, nice and bouncy-blonde. Her eyes had that harsh line and a deep violet shadow, egyptian eyes as she liked to imagine them. She had matching purple lipstick, that she'd bought almost a month before but not found an occasion to wear. All of that matched the purple bag she was bringing. Admittedly, the bag was too big to be a proper date purse, but it was big enough for her camera and her notes, and she hated leaving them behind, even on a date.

Except she couldn't go. Her father was, at that moment, sitting at the dining room table feeling proud that the sanctity of curfew was inviolate.

Gwen's phone blinked at her. Running late, Peter said.

Me too, she texted back. She looked at the window, scowling, then texted a little more. I'll meet you at the theatre. Hopefully we only miss the trailers.

She pulled on her jacket—it wasn't matched to her ensemble, but she liked the vintage olive field jacket look—and walked to the window. She opened it and peered out. Ten feet over was the fire-escape, next to the dining room. She reach out, grabbed a pipe, and pulled herself onto the thin ledge of her window.

Scooting over, she got entirely onto the waterpipe and started going down. Hand over hand, feet in the cracks between bricks, slowly descending. One floor down. There was a little boy in his bed, staring at her wide-eyed. She grinned at him, then focused on descending.

She didn't exactly want to hurry, since it was still forty feet down to the pavement, but her arms were aching, and she had to keep going. Just a little further. One more floor, and the building had a ridge around it. Her toes touched that, and she sagged in relief. She still held the pipe, but it wasn't supporting her entirely. Next, to the fire-escape. Fingers in the cracks, toes on the narrow ledge, she edged across.

One step, a second. Her toe twitched, and panick shot through her. Thirty more feet of falling would kill her. Why hadn't she just tied a rope to something in her room, just in case?

Lessons for the future. No going back, that far in. Another step aside, one more. Her toe slipped free, and she was on one foot, breathing hissing in as her muscles tightened to lock her in place.

She didn't fall. She put her foot aside, got it onto the fire escape, and in a sudden rush of energy was doubled over the railing, safe. After a minute to catch her breath, she climbed properly onto the fire escape and went the rest of the way down on stairs and a ladder.

The plan had been to get down and run to the subway, but she found that running was out of the question. The short climb had totally winded her, and given her a new respect for the already-impressive parkour videos the internet offered up. If she were in better shape, it might have been easier, but Gwen had never been an athlete, and she sure didn't intend to start then. What would have been really nice was being able to run up a wall, but that wasn't likely to just be given to someone at random.

All the same, she managed to make the train, and was walking up to the theatre just about the same time Peter came jogging out of an alleyway. He was wearing a suit. Not that it looked bad on him, he just had no idea how to dress for the occasion. At least he had went without a tie.

Also, his hair was a mess. She decided to ignore that, just smiling and waving.

"Hey, Gwen." He ran up, grinning and starting to blush. "I think we might have even made it before the previews."

"One can hope." She glanced past him, at the dark alley. "You take a different route?"

"Oh, um, I was a few blocks over, so I just uh, cut across."

Peter was a terrible liar. All the same, she didn't really want to stake out her boyfriend—was he really that? It was a date; she had insisted—so she just smiled, grabbed his elbow, and gave him a push so he'd walk her inside.

As it turned out, they missed part of one trailer, and then enjoyed watching the new Iron Man/Tony Stark biopic.

"How weird is it to do a biopic about a guy that's still doing all that stuff?" she asked, as they walked out.

"A little weird," Peter agreed. "I mean, are they gonna just do a sequel in twenty years, after he saves the world a few more times?"

"Iron Man, the Second Decade? Iron Man, Over The Hill? Iron Man, Back Brace?"

Peter laughed at her jokes, which made Gwen feel all-sorts of warm inside.

Alright, she thought to herself, you like him. That's fairly well established, so why is this just a movie? "So, where are you taking me for dinner?"

"Uh, dinner? I uh—"

"Perfect." She stopped him at the corner and pointed down the way. "Pizza."

"I thought your father had a strict curfew."

"He does. In fact, it's so strict that I'm already breaking it, so I figure I may as well utterly demolish it. Now, about that pizza."

Nervous as ever, Peter let her lead him into the little corner pizza shop and bought them each a slice.

"So, Gwen," Peter said, starting to get a little twitchy, "I've been meaning to ask. What's been keeping you up all these nights? I mean, you said you've been working, and I know you never talk about it because it's private stuff, other people's problems, but it usually isn't like this. Can you talk about it?"

"I can," she replied. "Actually, I'm kinda excited to. It's not regular work, more of a one-time opportunity."

"What is it?"

"So, the other day, I managed to get a whole slew of pictures of a new superhero. Or villain. He didn't really do anything, so it's hard to say. Now, it's getting a bit too late to make much of it."

"What, selling the pictures?"

"Yeah. It's been two weeks, and now there's a picture of him in a fancy new outfit. Still, they are the first pictures, and they're way better quality than the grainy one up on the Bugle. I was trying to track him down these last two weeks, and all I caught was a little hint of a foot. Better quality than that other picture, of course, but still just a basic little thing."

"Huh. I never would have thought about selling hero pictures. You think they're worth a lot?"

"Yeah, heroes get clicks."

"That's a really good idea."

"Problem is, I haven't been able to pinpoint where he's coming and going from. It's somewhere in Queens, I'm sure of that, but that's still a couple million people."

"Queens?" Peter bit at his lip, as he always did when nervous. "Is that so?"

"I'd even wager pretty heavy on central Queens, although that's harder to say. Still, a million people to pick from. Households, say four-hundred thousand. Probably he's young, being new on the scene and wearing a tight, unremarkable outfit. Honestly, I'd call it a low-budget outfit, which fits as well. Not some old guy with savings to draw on, somebody in his twenties, maybe a bit younger or older. Still, a few hundred thousand people."

"You've, uhm, narrowed it down a lot."

Gwen grinned. "You know, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad. I mean, I can facebook out a lot of those. There are lots of photo-processing algorithms, I can maybe find one to differentiate height. I'm sure I can determine his height from the photos. I mean, he's on a lamp-post, and those are completely standard, so I have great references. Male, too. Maybe just a hundred-thousand people, all in the age-range that uses social media."

"That's quite the get. Outing a hero?"

Gwen shook her head. "Nah, not outing. Firstly, that's his secret, unless he's a villain. Secondly, that's killing the golden goose. If I'm the one who gets the pictures of this wall-crawler, whatever they decide to title him, I get paychecks on the reg."

"You always had a mind for—" Peter just stopped talking, mid-sentence.

"What?" Gwen followed his gaze past her shoulder and took in the TV. Local news had broken in to show a downed police helicopter. Above it, a winged man flew. He circled once, and was away. "Wow."

Just then, Peter's phone dinged. Gwen looked back at him, seeing him already lowering the phone from reading a text. "I'm sorry, I forgot something for Aunt May."

Gwen rolled her eyes, and Peter's face stiffened. His eyes narrowed just a touch. "Ben's gone. She raised me when I needed it. I don't like letting her down."

Gwen had to swallow back a sudden lump of shame. "Sorry. Go ahead."

He instantly looked worried, like he'd done something wrong. For a second, she thought he'd apologize to her, but then he just left.

"Weird," she said, picking up the last of her slice of pizza and turning to the TV, where the flying man was no longer in sight. Nothing more to see.

She thought back over her conversation, a practice which was essential to detective work and close to as important for dating, in her estimation. Everyone had secrets, and Gwen wasn't one to let that slide.

She thought about Peter's talk about the business plan. About his reaction to the news broadcast. About the twitches that told about lies and nerves. About that text he received, and read, in seconds.

"Damn!"

Gwen scooped up her pizza, threw it into the trash, and rushed outside. She'd faked enough texts to recognize the practice, and that had been a fake text, surrounded by a mess of lies. Her 'boyfriend' was lying to her on the first date. Well, in fairness, dating was usually mostly about lying, but not about lying to her!

She couldn't make it into Manhattan quickly enough, especially not when she didn't know quite where to go, but she could think a step ahead.

* * *

The door to the parker residence shut with a solid thunk, sounding throughout the house.

"Aunt May?" Peter's voice was calm, unhurried.

The response was quiet, from the kitchen. A few words of muffled conversation, and then footsteps up the stairs. The door to Peter's room slid open, a band of light sweeping across the floor. The light turned on.

Peter yelped and jumped halfway across the room.

Gwen smirked.

"Peter?" May called from below. "Are you alright?"

It took him a moment to gather himself for a reply. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just startled myself, nothing serious."

May's next comment was indecipherable through three walls of plaster.

Peter straightened from the crouch he'd landed in, pulled over a chair, and settled into it. "What are you doing in my room, Gwen?"

"Are you familiar with my philosophy on secrets?"

"Um, secrets are powerful things for you to have, and inappropriate things for anyone else to keep from you?"

"Exactly. And yet you thought you could keep a secret from me."

Peter sighed. "Was it that easy to figure out?"

"Let's see, males from Queens with slim builds, about five-ten, who lie about texts and then disappear the instant they see a supervillain on TV. Honestly, I didn't check anyone else, I just assumed I was right."

"Damn. I'm gonna get figured out."

Gwen gave a pshaw and waved the worry away. "Nobody is going to find you out. I had inside knowledge, and I'm an awesome detective, and I'll help you learn to hide it better. Now, dish."

"What?"

"Tell me what happened. The flying guy, with the wings. Dish."

"Oh." Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, he got away."

"You suck at telling stories."

"Alright. I tried to web him down, but he could fly with my weight as well. He has the razor-sharp wings that can slice through my webbing, so he flew high and sliced me loose. I think he assumed the fall would kill me."

Gwen nodded along as he talked. "Alright, new idea. What can you do? Because that made no sense."

"Oh, Yeah," Peter said. "You're not gonna out me, are you?"

"Oh, come on. Of course not." Gwen hopped to the edge of the bed, so they were sitting knee-to-knee. "Now, dish."

"This word means a lot of things to you."

Her eyes narrowed menacingly. "Don't make me— huh, I guess I can't beat you up anymore, can I?"

He held up his palms, as though to display his defenselessness. "Trust me, I know the value of your threats. I'll dish."

"Good."

"So, I got bit by a spider at Oscorp, and a few days later I could stick to walls. It was awkward at first, but I learned to control it. I'm also ridiculously strong, and really fast. I can kinda sense when something dangerous is coming my way."

Gwen nodded as he talked. "Yeah, yeah. Strong, fast, good reflexes. Webs?"

"Oh, those?" Peter dug into his bag and pulled out a pair of metal cuffs. "It's my own mixture. It's got some kinks, still. Tensile strength is good, at 54 kilograms per millimeter, but it degrades fairly swiftly. It dissolves entirely after 56 minutes, on average, but after 33 minutes its strength begins to swifty decline."

"That doesn't sound like kinks."

"The increased longevity and strength require more chemicals, which shortens the usage I can acquire from one capsule, so I need to carry lots of spares, and I go through it faster, and that costs money. I need a way to pressurize the base fluids better, and I need a way to streamline the process, because currently it has a waste-rate of 22 percent."

Gwen grinned. "You have more fun making webbing than fighting super-villains, don't you?"

Pater laughed. "Oh, definitely. Those fights are scary. Now, swinging between skyscrapers, that's more fun than making webbing."

"So, you're gonna take your girlfriend for a tour of the city, right?"

He blushed, red as ever, swallowing with that audibly-nervous gulp he always had. "So, you're not breaking up with me, even though, I'm—"

"Super-athletic, a hero, and still smarter than anyone I've ever met?" Five-for-five, not that she'd share her measurement system with him. "No, Peter, I'm not dumping you for being awesome. Now, if you don't scoop me up, leap out the window, and carry me to the top of the Empire State Building, we may have issues."

* * *

The ride to the top of the Empire State Building was awesome. It was also cold. Standing at the top was even colder than the ride over. Gwen endured it long enough to take a few dozen pictures to cull through later, and then they went to a much lower rooftop.

"Rule number one," Gwen announced, "I'm always wearing pants when we go on a date."

Peter flicked his eyes down at her skirt, biting at his lip. She wondered if he knew how obvious her was. She broadened her stance and swished her hips to send the fabric swinging. His eyes bugged out and he managed to draw them upwards. "Uh, yeah."

"As I was saying, rules."

"I won't—" Peter began.

"That's not one of them."

Peter flicked another glance at her legs, then back to her eyes. "Okay."

"But there are some big ones coming. Rule number two: You tell me everything that happens with a villain. Rule number three: You buy me lunch every tuesday. Rule number four: You text me whenever you go haring off after a villain. Rule number five: You don't get hurt."

"I can do that."

"Good," Gwen said. "I like pizza and other greasy foods, unless I'm on a diet, in which case I'll tell you what I want."

"Yeah," Peter replied, shaking his head, "rule number three wasn't specific about quality. You sure you don't want to renegotiate this contract?"

Gwen lifted her chin. "New rule number three. Right here, right now, you have to kiss me."

He was dumbstruck again—it's good to be able to keep them dumbstruck—and she had to initiate the kiss. It was good, though.

* * *

Sunday was a long day. It was good, because Peter had snuck her back in through her window so she wasn't in any trouble. It was also good because she had something to do.

Gwen was up early, skimming articles on the web. To start with, she read the Bugle's newest headline, accompanied by its first ever clear picture of Peter in-uniform. Well, relatively clear. Still, it showed the red and blue, and a bit of the webbing, which was why they dubbed him Spider Man. The man he fought—the Bugle claimed the two were accomplices, not enemies—a distant winged-blur in the night sky, they dubbed Vulture.

That wasn't important. The important bits were the details Peter had shared about this Vulture. Wizened skin where it was visible. Thin limbs but powerful strength. His suit was fairly thick, at least a centimeter of metal all about him, and the wings were metal blades that attached to it. Electronics, robotics, other such advanced equipment. He was masked above the lips, but that was fine.

Old man, slightly taller than 5'10", either with significant wealth or extreme skill in robotic engineering. Likely from the New York area, but that couldn't be decided with any certainty. Not a lot to go on, but it was something.

Wealthy old men were a dime a dozen, but she could discount most of them. If he was still wealthy, he wouldn't be robbing armored cars. She kept those up as a possibility, in part because the field wasn't too large to winnow, but turned more to the idea that he had made his own suit.

If he were young, the worry would be that he was working for someone who could afford the suit, but an employer would be unlikely to hire a septigenarian. Thus, she began looking at defunct electronics and robotics laboratories, especially failed startups. If it were still a successful business, there would be no need for the theft, unless it was flagging. Of course, with that tech to show, it wouldn't likely be flagging, it would likely be doing tech demos and making millions.

It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was a start. She found a dozen prospects and headed out. Coleman Robotics was now a loft, and the former owner was very polite and invited her in for coffee. He even helped her out when she explained that she was doing a science fair project with a robotic arm, and a friend had mentioned his name. She was well-prepared, with the robotic arm she'd helped Peter make—he did most of the work—for the Midtown Science Fair the year before. She'd removed a few pieces so it was semi-functional and would actually benefit from some assistance.

After Coleman came Razzle-Dazzle Racers, which was actually doing fine, despite what the internet implied. Topher Industries, Bestman-Toomes, Quantum Solutions, and Hyperpress all were likewise lacking in answers.

Then she got a text from Peter. 'Vulture Spotted.'

She began skimming twitter for info, and soon had an address. She considered setting his phone up to track him, but that would be too easy for someone else to discover and hack, ruining everything. She'd just have to tell him to text her addresses whenever he could. She waved down a cab, got going the right direction, and ended up stopped by a police barricade. They were out in force, guns aimed and loudspeakers blaring. It appeared that red-and-blue costumes and flying mechanical suits got you more than just a stop-and-frisk.

Gwen looked around, spotted her dad, and went the other way. Of course, he'd want to be down there. That's where the action was, and action meant advancement, and advancement meant something he never really explained, although probably money and wasted time. If he saw her, he'd flip his lid. Danger was fine for him, and only for him.

She headed around the outskirts, found a restaurant with a rooftop grill, and got a table. She perfunctorily ordered fries and a milkshake, already looking through her camera. It was clear to the waiter that she wasn't there for a meal, but he let it slide. Everyone else had run when the chaos started.

She aimed as best she could, taking photos swiftly. She had to swap out the film a minute in and resume. She'd taken a lot of pictures in her life, but she could tell she was going to have to practice quick-loading if she was to make a career of this. Or go digital, which unsettled her stomach a little. She finished the change and raised the camera again.

The vulture slugged Peter and sent him hurtling towards the cops. Her stomach dropped into her toes and the camera fell to the length of its lanyard, jerking hard against her neck.

A barricade shattered into splinters and Peter bounced off of the pavement, rolling over, ripping his uniform in a dozen places. He struggled to stand, clearly unsteady on his feet, and the vulture plummeted towards him. Cops were running, screaming, panicking. A shot was fired. Gunfire filled the air. Steel-bladed wings swiped towards Peter. He dove sideway, vaulted off a parked car, kicked off a wall, launched two webs, and sent the Vulture spinning towards a window while Peter swung around the corner.

Gwen caught her breath. As swiftly as she could manage, she swapped in new roll and took aim. As soon as she saw motion, she began snapping pictures as fast as the camera could manage. The vulture exploded out, hurtling down the street. Peter swung after, launched a web at the Vulture's foot, and missed. Gwen expended the last of that roll and lowered her camera.

"Get anything good?" the waiter asked.

"We'll see," she said. "It's hard to tell with that much action going on."

"Can I see the pictures?"

"Sorry, real-film camera."

He looked a little confused, as if he'd only ever seen digital cameras in his life. Gwen went through most the rest of the milkshake in a rush, then headed home without waiting for Peter's text. She had to start the film developing, which was not an overly-swift process.

* * *

"This whole in-through-the-window thing is great."

Peter looked nervous as he pulled off his mask. "Are you sure your dad won't find out?"

"Aw, are you scared?"

"Yes. I'm scared you'll get grounded and I'll never speak to you again."

"Well, that lock won't open, and if he hears me talking I'll say it's skype. By the way, you need to make an account on skype."

"Fine."

"Now, on to the photos."

Peter stepped up behind her and looked over her shoulder as she pulled one roll out of the film-scanner and put in another. "Get anything good?"

"I think so." She started skimming through them.

"I can't even see them, you're just skipping through. Oh, that one looked awesome."

She flipped back a few, to one of Spider-Man's foot connecting with the Vulture's jaw. "Nah, too much blur on the motion, and it was mostly out of frame. Besides, I'm not looking for awesome."

"I thought we were gonna sell photos to the Bugle."

"We are. We're also going to catch this guy, and sell photos of him getting caught. Oh, did you get anything good?"

"My efforts at web-launched cameras were close, but not quite," Peter admitted.

"Missed and covered the lense with webbing, did you?"

"How'd you know?"

Gwen looked back at him, then grinned and gave him a quick kiss. "Don't look so down, it's the first try at that. My camera, by contrast, is the culmination of over a hundred years of technological innovation, wielded by a hand with a decade of practice."

She went back to the screen, skimming through even faster. "These ones," she explained, "might be great for sale, but I'm looking for a little bit I took near the end."

At last, she got to the window.

"It's just a window," Peter said.

"Right now, it's just a window." She started moving through the rest of that rush of twenty-four frames, an almost movie-like progression of the Vulture bursting out into the the street."

"Those are fairly blurry, too."

"That, Peter, is why they invented algorithms." Gwen switched into a terminal and started typing. It took a second to get the right pictures selected, and the right areas to focus on, and then she threw it all into motion. As the computer crunched the numbers, she explained. "The first algorithm is detecting faces, or in this case the lower half of a face. You can see these all picked out successfully. If it had missed—not too likely here because his green outfit is high contrast—I'd have to hand-pick those. After that, it gets to the more complicated portion: interpolation."

"That's genius," Peter said. "You wrote this?"

"Nah. I mean, technically I coded this instance, but it's all really closely based on other bits of code out there."

"It looked like it was done, and now it's starting over. Multiple passes?"

"It still has to deal with the blur. There are a lot of methods, but the one I use is using a filter before-hand to try to sharpen the image, then use the sequence of images to try to add detail. There will be eighty-three different filters to reduce the motion blur, and they'll all be done before, and they'll also be done after to the one attempt that had no blur beforehand."

"So, in a few minutes, we'll have one-hundred-sixty-seven images of this guy's jawline?"

"A few minutes?" Gwen laughed. "Try four hours. These are film-scans at the best resolution I can manage. In the meantime, we can do something else."

She stared at him, and he started looking uncomfortable. It was tempting to kiss him again. Really tempting. It was even more tempting to jump him, and have him hold her up like she was weightless, as his superstrength could easily manage that. However, he really did look a little overwhelmed. Take it slow, he's still Peter, she reminded herself.

Scooping up her tablet, she hopped onto the bed. "Come on, we still have sixty other shots to pick through for what you can sell to the Bugle."

"I can sell? They're you're pictures."

"The Bugle did a scathing piece about my dad a few months back, on account of him restraining his men when there was a super-villain loose downtown. He won't pay as well with a Stacy on the byline."

"You think he cares about names as much as he cares about results?"

She shrugged. "Also, my father would flip if he knew I was doing this, and he would find out if I put my name on it. Now, get into bed with me and start looking at pictures of how awesome you are."

His nervousness leapt right back to the surface.

* * *

Peter had to go before the image refinement finished. Gwen spent the last thirty minutes pricing out the system she wanted. It would have finished the entire process in about ten minutes, but she definitely couldn't afford it. She also needed to buy a better film scanner and improve the dark-room in her closet. She had a lot of needs and not so much money. And that was if her father didn't notice that she was suddenly going through a lot more film and not showing him quite so many pictures. She checked her accounts. She was actually getting close to the computer, if she bought only the key components and kept using her old case and drives. Close.

She sighed and lay back, waiting for the program to announce its completion. Soon enough, it was done. She loaded up the pictures and started swiping through them. In truth, it was close to random whether they were right or not. She was looking for commonalities, things that implied something was actually there, not invented by the computer. Reducing blur and sharpening photos was a science, but it was far from perfect. The true data simply was not present, so the computer tried to make educated guesses about what was supposed to be there.

There was a lot to go through, as her twenty-four images had been turned into over three-thousand possible faces. Over half of them she could discard without worry because what the computer had guessed was clearly not a person's face. Another chunk were too young for what she and Peter had seen. The remainder were less clear. She slid through them all over a dozen times, spending a good amount of time on each.

She sorted a dozen to the top. They had a commonality that it seemed unlikely the camera would invent. A smear across the jaw, following the edge of a wrinkle. Liver spots. The Vulture had liver spots.

"Yes!" Gwen yelled.

"What are you on about?" her dad called from the living room.

"I'm on about winning, which I am doing. I am winning at life and at all things, and you can suck it!"

"I'm glad you're feeling upbeat, but that sort of language isn't allowed under my roof," he called back.

"Dad, you can't really say 'under my roof' when you rent an apartment. That's a house-ownership-thing."

"I can say whatever I want to say, under my roof."

Gwen laughed, then looked back at the picture.

She opened her door and joined him in the living room, where he was skimming a case file and watching TV at the same time. "As you wish, Father, I shall be polite, under your roof, and request egress for the evening."

"Seriously? That's your only mode of speech that isn't inappropriate?"

"Hark! He understandeth."

"Go, go. Enjoy your evening. Tomorrow's a schoolday."

"I'll be back by eight," Gwen called as she grabbed her coat and rushed outside. This was too easy. She texted Peter as she went and discovered he was busy. She suspect that if she had given him detail he would have made time, but she really didn't need him along for this. Four trains and three short walks later, she was standing outside of Bestman-Toomes on Staten Island.

It was an ugly, boxy little building, with boarded-up windows and graffitti on the walls. She snapped a few pictures and headed in. There was a chain locked around the door-handles, but she had her picks. It wouldn't do to leave home without them. Inside, the place was vacant, as expected. She turned on the flash and took some photos, anyways. This might all fit into the story, if they wrote a story, rather than just selling photos. The obvious gaps where machinery used to be were great, too. It had a bit of that Old-Detroit-Factory vibe to it, reeking of abandonment and waste.

She headed upstairs, into the offices that overlooked the workfloor, and found a room ripped apart. The desk was flinders, a table by the window was legless and broken, the filing cabinet in the corner had been caved in, and the windows looking down below had been shattered. She found pieces of a chair embedded in the filing cabinet, and it wasn't easy to ram a wooden rod through a piece of steel. More photos, more documentation of the evidence.

Unfortunately, it was all empty. The filing cabinet had—apparently with great difficulty—been pried open and emptied. All the desk drawers were pulled out and trashed. The table had been a drafting-table, which seemed normal enough in a place like that. Kicking through the mess on the floor, she found the only thing with an ounce of writing in the entire place, one of those pompous triangular nameplates. Gregory Bestman.

There was little evidence of Toomes and Bestman on the internet, but when she went digging that morning she had turned up one picture. They were posing in front of their newly-opened business, touting their prowess at small-scale robotics and custom electronics. Toomes was robotics, Bestman electronics. Toomes was fifty-seven—almost seventy, now—and Bestman was forty-three, now dead for over a year, at fifty-four.

There was only one problem remaining: She had no idea where Toomes lived.

She headed east. What records were available online—older people tended to have less—indicated an address in Dongan Hills. She went there and found a new name on the mailbox. The current owners were polite, but they didn't know who lived there before them and had never met a Toomes.

Gwen walked up and down the street, eying houses, until she found one that had too much lace visible through the windows for any reasonable person. She rang the doorbell, then again after waiting a long minute.

"I'm coming," came from inside, a thin voice.

As expected, the door was opened by an old lady. She actually looked a lot like Peter's aunt, perhaps twenty years on.

"Oh, hello young lady," the woman said.

"Hi there, I'm Stacy."

"Well hello, Stacy. What can I do for you?"

"Actually, I was just in the neighborhood, and my grandfather said he knew some people around here."

"Is that so?"

Gwen nodded. "Oh, yes. Talked about them a lot. The Toomeses." She almost stumbled over the plural of that name and had to hide a grimace. "They don't seem to be here anymore, though. I thought, maybe you'd know where they've gotten to."

"Oh, they haven't lived here in years, no they haven't. Moved off to Brooklyn after his parents passed, Adrian did. I'm afraid I don't really know what happened with him."

"Well, thank you for your time, ma'am."

"Oh, I'm always glad to help such a polite young girl as yourself."

Father would be shocked to hear that description, Gwen thought as she waved and walked away. So, no joy there. Well, a move to Brooklyn. She pulled out her phone and did a quick search. There were seven Toomeses in Brooklyn, and none of them were Adrian. Still, only seven.

Nine trains later, Gwen was at a strange little library in a strange little corner of the Bronx. She hadn't been by in a while, but nobody was really a regular there, so they still recognized her. In truth, that was the fifth time a case had required a visit to the Phonebook Cemetary, as she preferred to think of it. The place was actually the Archive of Telephonic Records, which was less inspiring.

It had every phonebook ever published in New York City, as well as more than a few from elsewhere in the country. It had phonebooks from way back when Toomes moved to Brooklyn, back when Adrian's parents passed, which has thirty years earlier, according to the death record for them. Gwen started going through old phonebooks until she found an Adrian Toomes. Then she went in five-year chunks until he disappeared, and narrowed it down to when exactly it was that he disappeared. A year ago. Right around when Bestman died.

She took the subway again, and sat there watching a man do an impression of Micheal Jackson, wishing she could just swing across the city. Not all things for all people, though. Peter got super powers, Gwen got a new computer. Assuming this story sold, which she was confident of.

More photos as she approached the place, then upstairs and knocking on every door but his, asking about the neighbor. It was a mediocre place, neither fancy nor poor, which meant stable residents. Specifically, old people with enough savings or children to support themselves decently.

Every neighbor knew Adrian, and every neighbor knew he'd not been back in seven months. His place wasn't rented out, though. In fact, it still had his name on the door.

Gwen stood outside the door, staring at it. Had he abandoned it and kept paying rent for some strange reason, or did he just resort to flying in and out of the window, rather than speaking to his neighbors. They hadn't made him sound like a very nice person, so he might have stayed around and just ignored them. It didn't seem overly likely that he was, at that very moment, inside. On the other hand, he'd punched Peter hard enough to shatter wood on impact.

She turned away, pushed the button on the elevator, and got a text from Peter just as the doors opened. Vulture spotted. Going after. Gwen let the elevator close and walked back to the door. Nobody was paying attention. It was a trickly lock, taking a few minutes, each second making her more nervous about some neighbor stepping outside, but no doors opened and nobody came.

At last, she stepped inside, and knew she was in the right place.

Immediately, she was snapping photos. The dishes, piled high. The empty boxes of chinese takeout atop the one bag of cash he'd managed to make off with when he robbed an armored truck. The rest had been left behind, on account of Peter's intervention. She took several pictures of that. It seemed such a perfect shot, the pile of money alongside the cheap food.

The rest of the place was more of the same. A half-made bed with old sheets. Laundry that may have been clean, may have been dirty, spilling out of a basket. A sink with toothpaste crusting in a few places.

She switched rolls, and used half of the next on the workstation. Tangled bits of wire, bits of rubber scattered about from stripped wires. An entire box of unused actuators, and another bin full of metal slats that looked right for his wing-feathers. A grinder, to sharpen things. There was a padded box beside that, with glove-holes. Not to keep something toxic contained, like in all the movies, but just to mask the noise from nosy neighbors.

The window was open. Gwen leaned out and took photos up and down the street. Sometime soon, he would fly back in through there.

Gwen hurried out, trying to leave most everything as she'd found it, and got down to street level. She texted Peter the address and told him that was where Vulture was stashing his stuff, that it was where he'd return to, and if he turned away from there he'd go to the old factory on Staten Island, most likely. She attached pictures of both—cellphone shots, not the good pictures she had for the story—so he'd know what he was looking for.

Then it was across the street, buzzing at random until someone opened the door. Up she went, until she was at a service door. It was, surprisingly, locked. She opened it anyway and went out onto the roof, situating herself in the shadows near the edge. And it was back to the stakeouts she knew too well. She waited, and she waited, and she waited.

More than usual, time crawled instead of rushing. Somewhere, Peter was chasing the Vulture. She kept checking twitter and instagram, finding stupid comments and blurry pictures under #spiderman. Useless.

Then another text came: He got away.

Get here, she texted back. He'll be here soon.

He texted back that he was on his way, and then Gwen was back to waiting. And waiting. And cringing when a rush of air signalled something flying by overhead.

She twisted about and aimed the camera, snapping a few good pictures. He didn't notice. He just climbed in his window and threw a little bag across the room. The twitter feeds said he had hit a jewelry store, so there could have been anything in that bag, but he looked too angry for her to believe it was full of diamonds.

She photographed him pacing, photographed him glaring down at his workbench, and photographed him hurtling across the room as Peter swung through the window, foot leading.

Vulture had escaped before because he was out in the open sky. Indoors, surprised, he had no chance. In seconds, he was bound up in webs. He started to cut free with his bladed wings, but Peter slapped unsharpened metal over those blades, bending it into place with his hand, and then webbing it down. Three minutes later, Peter strung him up on a streetlight. He had to wait another two minutes for the police to arrive. He gave a quick salute and was off.

Seconds later, Gwen's phone vibrated: Meet me on the other side of the building. I didn't want the cops to see you.

She grinned and ran to the opposite side of the roof, and then they were both airborne, swooping across the city.

"Where are you going," she yelled, trying to be heard over the rush of a downswing.

"Home."

"Go to my place. We need to sort through these photos and get a package together. The Bugle will pay way more for this tonight than they will tomorrow."

He adjusted directions.


	2. Guns and Ammunition

Of Gwen's three screens, two were dedicated to competing photographs of Peter at work. On the left was Peter—in costume—doing a dive through two silvery loops, catching another and throwing it aside, while shooting a ball of web at a man in a black suit with silver loops inset into it. The Ringer was an idiot. To quote Peter, he'd been a great morning workout. If he could, Peter would keep the man around as an exercise machine.

Thing is, the Bugle didn't like happy stories. They didn't want the title to be 'Spider-Man Wins', they wanted the title to be 'Spider-Man in a Fight for His Life'. If they didn't go with that photo, there was one of the Ringer catching Peter's foot with a well-placed ring, so it looked like Spider-Man was about to derf headfirst into the ground. Villain smiling and looking triumphant, Spider-Man derfing. They'd love it. It might even pay well.

Gwen loaded her accounts page again. It was not near so flush as she had been hoping. Seventy-percent of their income from the paper went straight to web-fluid and film. Admittedly important expenses, but higher than she'd anticipated. Then, they split the last portion evenly, which meant she didn't get a lot. If she spent literally every dime she had, Gwen could buy her computer. She

She put the derf-picture up, titling the article 'Spider-Man Struggles to Best THE RINGER'. Then she emailed it to Peter. He did the actual writing. For being terrible at telling stories, he was surprisingly good at writing them, and he didn't need more notes than the title implied. He knew as well as she did that they'd get paid twice as much for a story of Spider-Man nearly losing.

After a moment, she put the other picture up with the title 'Ringer no match for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN'. She added a note that they might try both, see if they could actually sell the better one. They needed the money as much as they needed the good press, though.

Her phone buzzed. A string of police codes and an address. They'd found the shorthand was easier. Gunfire down near the port, no big deal, but he was in the area anyways.

No big deal.

She lay down, then slapped a pillow over her face and screamed into it. No big deal. Her boyfriend was just running at some gunfire. No big deal at all.

Maybe it wouldn't feel so awful if she wasn't always encouraging. He'd said it first: With great power comes great responsibility. She'd sure backed it up, though. And she did believe it.

She also believed that, with friendship to great power came a moderately large amount of responsibility. Like making sure nothing big slipped through the cracks. She grabbed her tablet and went back to a story she'd ditched a week ago.

There was something new, and her initial hunch no longer looked crazy. Thirty stores of sewer alligators. Except, the witnesses didn't say alligator or crocodile, which was what tripped something in her mind the first time. They said, 'Some big lizard thing.' It just felt weird. Now there was a new one. A wrecked veterinary clinic, just ripped apart, and the owner claiming some big lizard did it.

She loaded up the video. The news quoted 'It was a huge lizard' but they cut some key bits of the raw footage she'd acquired.

'He looked up from where he was digging through that cabinet over there.'

'He?' the reporter asked.

'Uh, the huge lizard thing. I swear, he— it was up on it's hind legs, digging in there. Maybe it was a dinosaur?'

He said it might be a dinosaur despite the scales, but his instinct, the first thing he said, was that it was a man. 'He' wasn't a meaningless word.

Gwen dug up the address and started finding out everything she could about the clinic. It was in the same vicinity of the other sightings, which meant she had a firm pattern. Not to bring to Peter, though. He'd think it was too dangerous, tell her not to investigate, and then he'd be trying to find it on his own, which really wasn't his specialty.

Work was always a good way to distract herself. It took a while to do research properly. She was digging through property records, making sure she had the right owner to contact, when the scrape came at the window.

"Come in," she said in her most alluring voice.

He didn't.

"Peter?"

A cough, a scrape at the glass.

She rushed to the window, and on the other side, Peter dangled from a web, one foot on the wall, one hand barely reaching high enough to touch the window. She scrambled to grab the window and jam it open, then grabbed his shoulder to pull him in. He immediately gasped and twisted out of her grip.

Gwen looked down. There was blood on her hands. He'd said it wasn't serious, just a little thing down by the port. She reached out again, slipped her hands about his chest, lower down, and dragged him in. Once he was halfway through, he released the web and his weight was entirely on her. They fell hard, a strained whimpering sound coming from him.

"Oh shit. Peter. Peter, look at me!"

Gwen jerked off his mask, revealing a face clenched tight with pain.

"Peter, where are you hurt?"

He didn't reply. She looked across him, but couldn't see anything, not even on the shoulder she knew was bloody. A red uniform hid blood too perfectly. "I'm gonna get you into the bed, alright?"

No reply. She started to stand, trying to pull him along. For the first time in a very long time, Gwen wished she worked out more. "Alright, the floor is fine."

She straightened him out and began trying to pull of his uniform. It wouldn't move. She dashed out into the kitchen.

"What's up?" her Father asked. He was in the living room again, TV on, reading up on some case.

"Nothing," she called as she grabbed a towel to cover her bloody hands as she dug for scissors in the knife drawer.

"We should talk more," he said. "I hardly see you outside of your room, these days."

"Tomorrow," she replied as she ran back into her room with a bundle of towels under her arm.

She could almost hear him trying to find something to say as she slammed her door shut and bolted it. She ran over to Peter and started slicing away his clothes. In seconds, he was in just a pair of briefs, with bloody little ducks on them. Gwen forced herself not to cry, she just began pressing towels to wounds and then securing them firmly in place with belts from her closet. Once she had everything covered, she wiped away the blood, pulled out a clean sheet, and set him on it.

On her tablet, she started searching for anything, looking up every few seconds to see if there was any change.

A circle of blood was spreading out on the white sheet, spreading from the small of his back. She braced him, tilted him up, and found a little hole there. She put a towel on it, then belted it down. An army medical guide on bandages had a section on irregular places and she skimmed over it. The lower back wasn't like an arm, since she couldn't just put a belt as tight as she wanted. The abdomen would just compress, and he'd get hurt more from the pressure on his organs.

She didn't have quite what she needed, but it would have to do. She stuffed torn-up sheet-cloth directly into the wound, then reapplied the towel and used two belts around his hips, as well as some cloths tied about his thigh, to pin it in place.

Looking elsewhere online, she found some EMT guides, and found out more than she wanted to know about what bullets did when they entered a person. She turned on her music to mask the sound as she threw up into her trash can.

He still wasn't conscious. She went over and flicked his eyelid, as the guides recommended. He twitched, which was apparently a good sign. He was still responsive to pain. It seemed rather dire to be considered a good sign.

She checked all the bandages, and confirmed that they weren't getting any redder. So, he was probably stable. Probably. But there were still bullets in him, possibly, and if she went anywhere for help their lives would be ruined. She pulled down a whiteboard, listed times down a side, and then checked his pulse twice. She wrote it down. Every five minutes, she'd check, and if there was a decline, then she'd get help, she decided. He didn't want to go to a hospital, but she wouldn't just let him die.

"You can do this," Gwen said softly. "You're Gwen Stacy, and you can do this."

She grabbed a smaller whiteboard—usually, the large one was for planning, not the small one—and made a list of what she needed. Then she read a few chapters on suturing and removing bullets, checking his pulse twice more along the way. It didn't look impossible. In fact, it looked easy, which was worrisome. Gwen had done a lot of things after reading about them, and things that looked easy were usually hiding something.

Still, he needed those bullets out of him.

She removed the pad on his shoulder. Beneath it, the blood was mostly clotted, only a little sluggish trickle resuming once the bandage was gone. She grabbed an old computer mouse, wrapped it in a towel, put it under his arm, and used two belts—her last two, and now every belt she owned was bloodstained—to pin the arm in place. As promised by the reference, the bleeding slowed. The mouse added bulk, and pinned hard enough against his side it pinched down on an artery going to his arm. It wasn't a proper tourniquet, but it was something.

Next came the worst parts. She started cutting. And failed. The kitchen knife was dull, but not that dull.

"Damnit, being super-durable is supposed to help you," she said, somewhere between whining and yelling.

Another quick trip into the kitchen—she had to change clothes, to hide the blood—discretely procured a sharpener and a better knife. She spent a few minutes honing it, checked his pulse—still steady—and went to work. A small slit to open the wound, then in with the clamp she had from the third-hand she used during their robotics project. It was meant to clamp down, but it could be screwed wide just as well, pushing the muscle aside so she could see.

She ran to the trash-can and wretched up water and bile, then got back to Peter. She swabbed away the blood, and began poking in with the tongs, trying to get the bullet. She could see the glint of it, but pushing the muscle aside was difficult. Whenever she pushed, he would twitch and tense his muscles, disturbing the scene. She needed anesthetic, but there was no getting that.

Taking a pause, she decided to give it a rush, to try to beat him to it. She pushed in quick, clamped onto the bullet, and lost her grip on the tongs. There was a sharp metallic clink, and the clamp shot out of the wound. A muscle spasm had pinch shut the opening she had, knotting the tongs in place and completely wrecking her clamp.

She sat back, got a grip on the tongs, and waited. Slowly, his muscles unclenched. She pulled the tongs out. The metal was twisted, wrapped around the bullet. Cheap tongs on a super, go figure.

"I'm gonna spend my computer money on a medical kit," Gwen mumbled.

She wasn't sure why that was what made her cry, but it was. She tried to work through the tears, trying to stitch the wound closed, but it useless. She leaned back against the bed, toes just touching Peter's bloody arm, and scrubbed at her eyes, wishing she was anywhere but there. The responsibility didn't feel moderate at all. It felt monumental, crushing, deadly.

Then the timer beeped. Time to check his pulse. Despite the tears, she made herself take the notes again, and was surprised to find that the counting and keeping time pushed the tears away. And his pulse was still steady. This could work. It had to.

She got to stitching. The guides on sutures were for special tools, but the basic principle translated easily enough. The main problem was that he was too strong and too durable. Whenever he spasmed, she had to wait for him to unclench. Twice, she bent a needle on his skin, but she didn't want to use a heavier gauge and leave a massive hole in his skin. The only large needle she had was for canvas, and it was almost two-millimeters across at the eye.

She kept going through the smaller needles, using ten stitches to close his shoulder. She removed the binding from his sides and pressed a clean bit of towel onto the wound. After a minute, she checked, finding little blood. She waited another minute, and found similarly little blood. This time, she just used a large, stick-on bandaid. It was sufficient.

Then came the wound on his leg and the wound on his back. At first, those had been the terrifying ones. There were all sorts of comments from EMTs on forums—she had read quite a bit in her rush to figure out what to do—about how a bullet would ricochet through a person, splintering and coming out in odd places. Internal bleeding was deadly, they all warned.

Thing is, if he was bleeding internally, his pulse wouldn't have stayed steady. Closer inspections revealed clear through-and-throughs for the other two hits. She stitch shut the wound on his leg—seven stitches—and decided to just tape down the one on his back.

She knew she should clean up, but she couldn't find the strength. She just lay down beside him, curling against his uninjured side, and fell asleep.

* * *

Sounds of motion woke Gwen, and for an instant she was terrified that there was an intruder in her room. Memory rushed in, and she was terrified that Peter was alright. She leapt up, searching for him. An instant later, he stumbled out of her closet, the shreds of his uniform in his hands.

"I had to cut it off," she said, as though she had to make excuses for what she'd done.

He let it fall. Looking down at himself, he seemed to finally realize there were stitches in him. "I didn't know where to go."

"You made the right choice," Gwen assured him. "When in doubt, come to me."

"Thank you. Where did you learn to stitch up gunshot wounds?"

"The internet. It's not all supposed to be free, but there are some excellent references for most everything." She scooped up the tongs, still bent around the bullet, and showed it to him. "This one was still stuck in your shoulder."

He looked down, trying to see the cut there, and winced at the pain. "It's weird, getting shot didn't hurt too badly, way less than getting kicked around by some super-powered baddie, but I could always just bounce back from those hits. This, it just kept hurting, worse and worse."

She set the bullet down. "Let's not talk about it, not right now."

He smiled, that same shy smile he always had. Then he looked down, blushing at he took in his boxers.

"Let's get cleaned up. I'll be right back." Gwen went into the hall, came back with the last of the towels and a pitcher of water. She dipped one into the water and walked towards him, setting the wet towel against his blood-smeared chest.

"Gwen, I can—"

"Shh." Gwen slid the towel across his chest, wiping away the blood. "Don't talk."

He blushed even harder as the water ran down towards his boxers. "Gwen—"

She kissed him, which shut him up properly. "Now, let's get cleaned up, alright?"

* * *

The next morning, Peter and Gwen rushed to clean up the last of the blood, then he had to dart out the window just seconds before her father would have thrown a fit if she didn't open her door.

The bloodied mess was all in Peter's bag, ready to be burned somewhere discreet, and then they had a list of household goods to replace, and then they had to track down the people that had shot Peter up, and in the midst of all that they had to go to school.

It was feeling like a normal day again. Peter was walking around like nothing happened, and she envied his powers a bit yet again. She was still sore, and she hadn't been the one getting shot. Still, better it was him. He could already smile about the encounter with the gunman, not at all worried about going out there again. Had it been Gwen, she suspected she wouldn't have been a hero at all, she'd just have been a girl with superpowers.

Or maybe the superpowers changed people, she didn't know. All the same, even if she wasn't a superhero, she could help. During school, she spent her class periods noting down possible ways to figure out who had been there. She also downloaded some information about ballistics and read up on that, being as she had a whole bullet to work with.

Lunch and the afternoon were dedicated to the news, blogs, twitter, and what police reports she could scrounge. It looked like the encounter on the docks had been between the Manfredi crime family and some unspecified vigilante that loved to kill people. No wonder everyone had ended up shooting at Peter. The idea of him going back in there was more than a little terrifying, but Gwen made herself imagine him going back in not knowing what to expect. That was clearly the worse of the options.

So, she didn't head home after class. She headed to the subway and came up near the crime scene. It was still taped off and busy with forensics teams, so she just took some photos from a distance, making sure to include every marker they had laid down, so she could better place things later. She also tried to get some good angles into the adjacent warehouse, as some of the gunfire had come from inside it, but the angles weren't the best. Then it was off to police headquarters. She said hi to her dad, which cheered him up, then found a quiet corner to sit down in for a few minutes, earbuds in like she was listening to music.

She had the workup of the bullet on her tablet, and police headquarters had wifi. It wasn't hard to break in, and from there to hi-jack a computer that was recognized as being on the right network. A few queries later and she had ballistics reports.

Those were, as it turned out, rather arcane. At first, she was just confused, as the bullet didn't have striations like she was seeing in the comparisons, but then she did some more reading on rifling, specifically looking for that, and found the answer: polygonal rifling. The facts were clear: There was no reliable way to match a bullet to a specific gun with polygonal rifling.

That said, there was some she could learn. From the slug size—45 ACP, full-metal jacket—she narrowed the list down a lot. Not too many polygonal-barrel pistols used those. The next step was careful comparison.

She pulled a few hundred images, all the ones that seemed relevant, and cleared out before anyone asked her some awkward questions. She sat around on the subway for a while, just riding in circles, doing more reading and comparisons.

She had a copy of Forensic Investigation of Unusual Firearms up to reference, and a whole lot of pictures to go through. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't exactly difficult, either. A few hours later, she switched trains to reverse direction, as she'd passed her stop on the loop yet again, and went back to the station.

The slug had been fired from a very short-barreled pistol, probably a compact designed for concealed carry. There were a couple rare possibilities, but only one likely match: an H&K USP 45 CT. They weren't the most numerous guns in existence, and they weren't exactly cheap. Not the sort of thing random thugs walked around with.

Nobody much noticed her walking through the parking lot, and it was easy to lean into a car and stick a wifi link into one of the computers. She walked away and started loading up crimes involving an H&K USP 45 CT, keeping an eye on the car the whole time. Fortunately, nobody drove off. It would have sucked to lose the transmitter—fifty bucks sort of sucked—or to have to search for it later and risk getting caught again. Nobody did drive off, and she finished her download.

Gwen walked back over, leaned in, pulled the drive, and turned away.

"Hey!" Someone yelled.

Gwen let out a breath. She'd prepared for this. "Yeah?"

"What the hell you doing?" He was rushing her way.

She leaned against the car and let a little box discreetly drop in. "Eating."

"You pulled something out of the car."

"You caught me officer." She held up her hand. "I pilfered a donut. Hey, you should charge me with theft. Value of stolen goods: maybe a nickel."

He towered over her, and was unfortunately not the sort of fat cop that would have made for good donut jokes, but a younger, fitter guy. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Yes? No? I'm not psychic?"

"Just sarcastic?"

"Not just, but it's in the mix." She stood up, making it obvious she was walking away. "Are you gonna let me go, or do you want the donut back. Because I gotta say, it's not in good shape."

"I remember, you're Captain Stacy's girl."

Damn. "You caught me. Next time, I swear I'll try to abuse that relationship, rather than hiding it from you."

"What do you think he'll have to say about this?" the man asked.

"What do you think he'll have to say about harrassing his daughter?"

The man sighed. "Come on, do you expect me to—"

"Let me leave? Yes, I do, because you don't need this today."

The police officer glared, just glared at her. He move to stop her, though.

She kept calm all the way down to the subway platform, where she sank down against the wall and stuck her head between her knees, trying to slow her racing heart. If she ever got caught hacking into the police databases, she was going to be in worlds of trouble. Yeah, being a police captain's daughter would shield her, but that only went so far. Just one little thing she needed, and she was nearly caught trying to get it.

The train arrived, and she made herself get on. Almost caught. Only almost. But she had gotten what she wanted: every crime with an H&K USP CT in the last ten years. It was a sizeable list.

* * *

The first step was culling all the weapons held in evidence, which was most of them. The next step was ignoring cases which were self-defense, because those just seemed unlikely to involve a vigilante. Then there was the comparison: crimes with the right gun, and crimes involving the Manfredi Family.

There were seven over the last three years, none before that. The locations gave her nothing, but it did imply some intent.

Unfortunately, that sent her back to the waiting game. She had sent out a request that would help clarify the situation, but hadn't gotten a reply yet. Not everything was easily hacked into. Often, the best route was the legal one.

Slumping back in her chair, Gwen loaded up some TV channels on her main computer screen. Nothing interesting presented itself.

She checked her phone. No texts, no calls. She thought a moment, then called Peter.

"Hey, Gwen," he answered. "It's uh, been, since last night."

God, still so shy. "Yeah, it's getting towards evening again. What're you up to."

"I was swinging past the docks, seeing if I could spot anything."

"Still crawling with cops?"

"Yeah, they're still busy."

"The first report indicated a few hundred rounds fired," she pointed out. "They need to collect all the slugs, and photograph all of the impacts, and generally just record a whole lot about a fight that big. DNA swabs from blood stains, all that nonsense."

Her eyes widened, her mouth turned dry.

"So," he said, "when do you think—"

"Peter, where did your blood land?"

"What?"

[[Peter's blood. Add this in later?]]

"Peter, you were shot, and the cops are collecting blood. Some of it's yours."

"Oh. Shit."

"Dammit!" Gwen snarled. "I should have thought of this earlier. It's already gonna be at the lab, or at least being packaged to ship out. This is way too late."

"Alright, we'll figure something out. We'll, I have no idea."

"No, I know what to do about this. Trust me. It's not something we can solve just yet."

"You're sure?" Peter's nervousness came through clearly.

"I'm sure. Look, just come by my room. Let's relax a bit."

"Relax?"

"Maybe."

* * *

Thursday was a schoolday like any other, which is to say Gwen largely ignored her teachers and focused on her work. It wasn't that she didn't care about her education, she just didn't find that it came from school very often. School was for most people, smart or not. Peter needed school, and he was way smarter than Gwen, by her honest estimation.

However smart he was, he was at his best with a little guidance. He didn't just grab a book and learn a thing on his own, and Gwen did. Teachers just felt superfluous to her.

Also, of late, school seemed less important than ever. She had the manifests she had requested. It wasn't precisely legal, but it wasn't precisely illegal either. It was one of those things that happened as a favor and wasn't prohibited, even though it obviously violated the spirit of the regulations. It took a while to find everything that had been off-loaded to that warehouse, and that assumed nobody had been playing with things—a serious concern, being as this was the Manfredi Crime Family.

There were quite a few things shipped there that night, and any of them could have been a cover for drugs. One stuck out, though. Roxxon Europe. It could have been entirely innocuous, if she hadn't bothered to actually look at the rest of the manifests. It wouldn't do to just glance at one warehouse without context, so she'd done a little research.

Roxxon was massive. Beyond massive. It had an entire complex of warehouses entirely its own. If it shipped something from its European facilities to its headquarters in New York, it would ship them through its own facilities. It had entire container ships dedicated to its shipments, yet there was one lone container shipped on an otherwise unremarkable cargo freighter and stored in a facility that happened to be the location for a serious gunfight. Something was inside that container.

She went back to her photos from earlier, looking at all the containers she could see. She did her best to enhance the numbers on all of the container doors, and could quickly discard most of them. One, depending on whether or not the last two numbers were sevens, might have been the Roxxon container. The door was open, so the shot only caught the numbers at an angle.

Probably the correct container, being as it was open and almost a perfect match. She mentally filed it as being the target of Manfredi's goons, and then it was time for the really important question: were the contents missing?

The report said nothing about theft. For that matter, it said nothing about breaking and entering.

Gwen spent the entirety of fifth period chewing on her pen. It was impossible to get any real work done during the lab portion of physics. Last year she'd been partnered with Peter, which meant the teacher let them do whatever they wanted. Peter had just been a geeky guy, then, if a little cute. She wondered what would have changed if she'd asked him out then.

At the least, working on the robotic arm would have been more fun. Less successful, perhaps, but certainly more fun. He could have—

"Miss Stacy."

Gwen looked up. "Yes?"

"Would you care to participate?"

She shrugged. "Sure, it's not like I've got much else going on right now."

"I don't appreciate your tone."

"Really? That's funny, because I got just for you." She picked up her bag in preparation

The teacher glared. "Miss Stacy, report to the prinicipal's office immediately."

"Sure thing. Later." She gave a quick wave to the class as she walked out, immediately pulling out her tablet to load up the files while she walked. The records listed warehouse owners. The warehouse in question was owned by Coordinated Holdings, Ltd.

"That's a fake front if I've ever seen one," Gwen muttered as she got to the principal's office.

"What was that?" the secretary asked.

"I said that I'm Gwen Stacy, here to be talked at by the principal."

"Again?"

She smiled. "Guess he likes me."

"This isn't a joke, Miss Stacy. Your parents will be called."

"Really? I'm pretty sure I was telling a joke," Gwen replied. "Also, you might want to check your records about whether that was supposed to be plural."

The secretary glared. They did not get along. "Take a seat. He'll be with you in a few minutes."

Gwen walked over to the row of chairs alongside the door, sitting down beside Tiny, who she knew well from detention and other instances of this particular situation. She gave him a fist-bump before sitting down and going back to her research. So, Manfredi—or someone associated with him—owned the warehouse. A shipment arrived, and while he was retrieving it, a vigilante interfered. Manfredi's men managed to get away with the goods. Therefore, the vigilante would next strike where that shipment had been moved to.

The vigilante who had shot her Peter in the shoulder. Gwen did not like people who shot Peter in the shoulder.

* * *

Once her father got the call from the principal, Gwen was grounded. Since she had to stay in her room, she had Peter swing her out the window and they went down to the docks together. He stopped atop a nearby warehouse, checking out the scene from a distance. It was probably a good precaution, the sort of thing a responsible superhero did, rather than just rushing in blindly.

"You have a clever plan to track this shipment down?" he asked.

"I do not. But that doesn't mean something won't come to me as we work. Let's get down there."

He scanned the area once more, but shook his head. "May as well. Uhm, I'm gonna lower you down, then split up. Not that I don't want to go with you, but I'm in uniform, so in case we get seen..."

"Yeah. Good idea. Or, you could change again. I do like it when you change."

"Later, Gwen, later."

He was bolder already, just having the outfit on. She gave him a quick kiss—weird feeling, with a layer of polyester in between. Next time, she'd pull it up before she kissed him.

He pulled her close for a second, then swung off the edge. A little yelp of surprise escaped, but he set her gently down before leaping away. On her own in a dark lot where a gunfight had happened only two nights earlier. No big deal. She suppressed a shiver and started exploring.

She checked her photos to look everywhere the cops had been looking, but it was all just bullet-marks, nothing useful for her. She made her way inside, towards the questionable container. Someone had closed it.

She sat down and fiddled with the lock, spending a few minutes getting the stiff tumblers to move, then opened it up and looked inside.

Empty.

She turned, walked back out. No traces in the vicinity, no traces in the container, no leads for her to follow. Except, there were always leads. Gwen had talked to her father more than a few times about his job. He skirted a lot of topics, but he was proud of his detective work, and damn good at it. Now, he had a team of detectives. He didn't get to work as many cases, but he still kept up with them, kept an eye out for leads others had missed. There were always leads, he insisted.

She began wandering through the warehouse, wondering what she was missing. They needed a truck to move whatever they'd taken, but there was no easy way to figure out which one. Any truck would do, and she had no pictures from the night of the firefight. Peter hadn't seen them unloading anything, had claimed the containers were all closed when he cleared out.

So, after Peter left, Manfredi's goons had driven the vigilante away, gotten a truck over there, loaded it up, and driven off. Gwen headed over to the forklift in the corner, a hunch starting to form. The manifest said there was one object inside. The name had clearly been fake, as was typical with some sorts of high-tech shipments, but it would still have been a single box inside the container. If it were just one box, it weighed a lot. The manifest listed it at 16120 kilos with the container, 14220 for the contents alone.

A search turned up the fact that forklifts have a clearly labelled plate that listed their weight capacity. The forklift in the warehouse was limited to 10000 kilos. Maybe they'd ignored that and just moved it anyway. Those 'maximum' limits always had some leeway.

Still, that was off by a lot. More likely they had a truck that was designed to load it, either an overhead crane or a bed that was hauled up by hydraulics. She went back to the container, shining a light on the ground out front. There was a hard groove in the ground, the point where a descending bed, not yet onto the truck but with all of those 14220 kilos on it, pressed into the concrete. So, that was the truck type, and where the truck had been.

She turned her light out and headed outside. Time to hope for luck. She called Peter. He confirmed that his wider search had turned nothing up, so he came back to get them swinging again. She gave directions to four different sites. They were every place she had been able to connect to the front-business that owned the warehouse.

The first turned out to be an office in a shared building with limited parking. No leads, there, although if the others didn't pan out they could always break in and hope the criminals kept meticulous records.

The second was another warehouse. Peter crawled along the windows and assured her there was nothing inside that matched the truck she had described.

The third location, far enough out that she suspected they were actually leaving the city, required them to abandon webbing their way between skyscrapers. Peter changed back, but insisted on keeping his outfit on underneath, which made it much less fun to watch. They took a bus to a nearby stop, then ran.

Well, Peter ran. She made it a hundred yards and gave up, so he carried her, piggy-back style. That was actually kinda fun, although it got scary when he turned off onto a path through the woods and didn't slow down. He was kicking off of trees, barely touching the ground, once doing a flip over a branch, all without dropping her or slowing down. He made it look easy.

She hugged a little tighter and gave a kiss to the back of his neck. No time for the evening she suddenly wanted to have, though. They had arrived, and they were in the right place. Up ahead was a truck of the type she'd been suspecting, parked alongside a low, concrete building. Just past the truck was a large, roll-up door.

"Is it just me, or does that look ominous?"

Peter stood tall. He swiftly undid his shirt. When he slipped his shoulders back, and shirt and jacket both slid to the ground. "It looks like an invitation to the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, to me."

She lunged forward, grabbing him and pulling in for a kiss, this one much deeper. After a few seconds, she backed off. "Alright, let's save that for later. Don't get shot, okay?"

"With that for later, how could I risk it?"

He pulled on his mask and began sprinting across the open ground, bent low in the high grass to keep out of sight. He moved so naturally out there, like he had always been meant to be a hero. It wasn't just some fluke of powers, she decided. The powers hadn't made him the sort of man who would rush headlong into danger just because he believed it was right, that confidence had always been in him.

She watched him a moment more, then took out her camera and started taking pictures. Seconds later, the shooting started. She twitched, but forced herself to keep her camera trained. The action was all indoors, but that didn't mean it would stay there.

A sudden staccatto screed of automatic weapons being fired, then quiet. The metal rollup clanged, as though it had been rammed by a truck. Light spilled from where one corner had been torn open.

She trained her camera there, ready for a photo. The wind carried Peter's voice to her, bellowing. "Seriously, how do you get these things? Is there a catalog?"

"Get offa me!" roared somebody with a voice that fair overwhelmed Peter's.

The rollup shredded, a massive gray bulk plowing through. She started snapping pictures, wishing that she could use a flash, or better yet, flood lights. The night was not kind to high-action photography. She could use a really high f-stop and a really sensitive film, but if she lowered the shutter speed it would turn into a blur. Her only hope was to take enough shots that a few of them worked out, which made her glad she'd filled her bag with rolls of film before they left. If any of the shots came through, they'd be spectacular.

The brute facing Peter was easily twelve feet tall in that massive, mechanical suit. The top of the suit, where the man's head stayed level with his shoulders, came to a point, as though it where some rhino, designed to ram through doors headfirst. Perhaps that was the design, as the door had ripped apart like newsprint rather than steel. Now, he was wheeling back towards Peter. He ducked a bit, as though bracing himself, and the suit opened up, revealing gun-mounts. Her heart climbed into her throat, but Gwen kept her camera snapping.

The two gatling guns began to spin, spitting fire towards the slight figure before the Rhino, but Peter just leapt towards them. He twisted strangely in the air, tugging himself about with two webs he'd shot wide. He passed the fire untouched, flipped over the brute's head, and jumped down behind. The brute fell, although Gwen couldn't see how he'd been tripped.

Peter jumped away, launching webs behind himself, then diving into the grass. The Rhino struggled to his feet, tearing at the webbing, and just as he got upright, Peter dove in. He rolled, planted himself on the side of the truck, and tugged.

The truck fell apart, and he came up with the entire, twenty-foot drive-shaft. On the end Peter held, the axle was still attached, one wheel dangling. The other end collided with his opponent, a clang ringing through the night air.

"Home run!" Peter yelled.

The Rhino started shooting, but Peter was already in the air, landing on top of his foe. He had the metal bar high, ready to swing down in a powerful strike. "And the crowd goes— Oh crap!"

Peter leapt, and the Rhino was engulfed in flame. There was a clang and the mechanical suit went to one knee, and then silence. Gwen got pictures of where the metal armor was damaged, a big gap in the armor on the left shoulder. Not indestructible by any means. Hopefully that shot developed.

Gunfire sounded, and Gwen spotted a flash from the other side of the drive, just at the edge of the treeline. She aimed her camera, homing in on the flashes, adjusting the zoom, and taking more pictures. Finally, she got the shooter fully in frame. A man, lying down behind a rifle, sighting through some big, ugly optic, shooting. When the muzzle flared, it illuminated a discarded rocket-tube, and an open case that had probably held the rifle.

Gunfire sounded from the Rhino again and the man rolled aside, the ground where he had lain spraying dirt. Rifle in hand, he ran deeper into the trees. Seconds later, another muzzle-flash shone from the darkness.

"Where are you!" roared the man in the mechanical armor.

"Well, I'm right here," Peter replied.

Gwen spun, just in time to see him take another swing with the drive shaft. This time, he hit the back of the Rhino's knees and toppled it. Lying on its back, the Rhino bellowed and thrashed, ripping up concrete with each swing of his arms.

Another gunshot, and Peter leapt aside.

Gwen spun back that way, refocusing the camera on—

"Shit, he's gone," Gwen said, then silenced herself, glad the thrashing mechanical suit was making such a ruckus.

She scanned the area for the other gunman, but couldn't find him. Then, he just walked out of the treeline.

Peter scooped back up his driveshaft and glanced at the Rhino. "If you stop struggling, I won't hit you again."

The Rhino kept struggling. Peter raised the bar high, and when the brought it down one of the Rhino's arms stopped moving.

"See," Peter explained, "you have these huge actuators in your joints, and if they get dented, they bind up. So, you can stop thrashing, or I can keep breaking your actuators." The Rhino stopped struggling.

The gunman came closer, stopping several paces from Peter. Gwen swapped film as swiftly as she could manage, then resumed her picture-taking. The man was a touch taller than Peter, with a hard-edged, unshaven jaw. His scowl looked permanent. He was laden with weapons, grenades and handguns, but the rifle was the only weapon in-hand.

"I see that we're allies in this," he said.

"Allies?" Peter pointed at his shoulder. "You shot me. Have you ever been shot? What am I talking about, of course you've been shot. Just look at you, you probably get shot for fun on the weekends."

The man shook his head. "Are you going to finish him, or should I?"

From behind his back, the man produced a white block, about the size of a brick. Peter stayed still, staring blankly. "Is that C4?"

"Yes."

"You're going to kill him."

"Yes."

Peter shook his head. "Yeah, uh, no. See, he's defenseless. Well, I mean, he has some guns and a semi-functional mechanical suit of armor, but defenseless against us. It's over."

"If you let him live," the man said, "he'll just do this again. They'll give him a trial, give him maybe a few years in prison, and let him go again. If you let him live, you've accomplished nothing."

Peter drew himself up. "If I let him die, I've accomplished nothing. This world doesn't need anymore death. It needs second chances."

"He'll waste his."

"I don't—"

Gunfire sounded. Gwen stared, open-mouthed. She hadn't even seen the man move, but the rifle was pointed at Peter, muzzle smoking. Peter shrugged. "See how you missed me?"

"But—"

This time, it was Peter who interrupted, a spray of webbing coming at the gunman. He dove aside, and Peter gave chase. Suddenly, they were swinging at each other. Gwen didn't get it. Peter was so strong, he could have tossed the guy with ease, but instead he was just fighting like they were equals. It made no sense. The man tripped Peter.

Gwen expected him to leap up, but he just lay there, hands casually linked behing his head, looking up at his enemy.

"So," Peter asked, "this is what it comes to. Do you fire, do you slay a man who is innocent, or do you let him live, and back away from the path you have chosen?"

"You are not innocent. By your mercy, you aid them, you aid the enemies of mankind."

"They are mankind."

The man glared down at Peter. "Not anymore. They've made themselves less. And you've chosen to join them."

There was a burst of sound, a scream, and Gwen gave a little cry herself, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. And then Peter stood up. Her fear turned to confusion. The gunman had fallen, the gunman was screaming.

"Funny how a barrel filled with webbing doesn't work so well. Sometimes the choice is between doing the right thing and failing entirely. Shame about the choice you made."

Gwen remembered to take more pictures, and caught the entire sequence of Peter webbing the gunman to the wall, then got good pictures of him dismantling the suit and webbing that man up alongside. He dug through both of their pockets until he came up with a phone, and he called the police.

Once they were blinded, he joined Gwen, to wait for the police together. She pulled his mask up a bit, and kissed him again, properly.

"I've never seen you like that before."

"What, out there fighting?" He glanced at the smoldering wreck of the truck, at the twisted mess of the mechanical suit, at the damaged wall of the building. "You've seen me fight dozens of men. You took pictures of it."

"It was always in the city, with so much else going on. I couldn't hear it. You're so calm out there, snapping jokes, just laughing it off."

"Me? Calm?" Peter laughed. "Oh no. I'm not calm. But once it all starts up, the adrenaline pumping, once I know it's going to happen, I guess I just have to joke around a bit. It's crazy in there, and if I didn't have some humor, I think I'd lose it. Joking around's the only thing that keeps me calm. Also, it throws them off. They're all like, 'Huh? Is he a comedian? Have I seen him on TV?'"

She laughed. "It's really like you're a different person, once you put the suit on."

"Is that... weird?"

"Weird?" Gwen grinned. "It's great. It's like I get to date two people at once, and neither minds. I've got this smart, considerate guy back home that is always making sure I'm alright, and I've got this badass muscular athlete out in the city who is always saving the day. It's way more fun this way."

Peter wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against him, and kissed her again. "Let's go back to your place."

Gwen pulled away a bit. "Hey, don't get too excited, or I won't be able to wait until we leave. The cops aren't even here yet."

"I have supernatural hearing. There are sirens on the road. Now, can we go back to your place?"

"Actually, I don't think that's where I want to go," Gwen said.

"Oh, and where do you want to go?"

"I want to go to the top of One World Trade Center."

He quirked an eyebrow, a motion oddly conveyed through his mask.

"Keep the outfit, and bring some blankets."

He didn't ask, he just scooped her up and started running. They didn't make it all the way there in one go, but they did finish the night there.


	3. A Dangerous Profession

Peter swung Gwen over to her room, she changed, and grabbed her homework—she could finish it on the subway. Probably. She was tired, as they hadn't slept at all, but she figured she'd be fine for school.

Her trip to school made it to the living room, where her father stopped her with a look. His face had a layer of stubble over its usual stony expression. He was wearing a uniform that usually looked perfect, but right then still had the previous day's wrinkles in it.

"You didn't come home." His voice was flat, just stating facts, not letting his real emotions—disappointment, anger, worry—show through.

"I—"

He shook his head, cutting her off with that alone. "Be honest, Gwen."

"I didn't come home last night."

"Where were you?"

She paused a moment. "I was out."

"With who?"

She stared at him, knowing there was no way out. Gwen was a skillful liar. She could sound believable for a hundred different situations. Just, not for situations involving her father. She wasn't sure if it was her own nerves, or if it was his experience from hundreds of interrogations, but he always knew.

"Peter."

"The boy from the science fair?"

She nodded.

"You came and went from your window?" he asked.

"Yes." Don't ask how, don't ask how, don't ask how, she silently begged.

He nodded, and acceded to her silent demand. "Peter is going to join us for dinner tonight."

"Alright."

"You're not coming home on your own, I'm picking you up after school, just like I'm about to go drop you off."

She nodded, knowing there was no way out. Hell, he'd even see her doing her homework, which would probably extend her grounding from one lifetime to two.

* * *

Since she'd found other things to work on during the day, school had become swift, but that day it was endless. Before first period she told Peter that her father had caught her. They had no classes together, and could only brush past each other in the hall. They ate lunch, and then he took classes at a community college nearby and she didn't even see him in the hall.

It didn't give them much time together, but she wouldn't have tried to change his schedule. To hear him tell it, his college 'classes' were more like free time in a lab with a guy who liked science. He loved it. Except, now he spent his nights hunting down villains, and he kept getting to school exhausted. They had to lay off villain-hunting, if they wanted him to have that future he'd always dreamed.

Or, she could pick up some extra slack and take some weight off his back. Gwen spent what time she could find during class looking at photos. The connection back to her computer wasn't perfect, but she had to host them there. That way, she could modify the high-resolution scans. She'd done her best when developing them to compensate for the poor lighting, but there was a lot of progress left to be made. It was obvious that the best shots would be those few where explosions, gunfire, or flame illuminated portions of figures.

By lunch, she had it narrowed down to a dozen that had potential. She and Peter talked it through at lunch. Two of the photos were certain. One showed Frank Castle—police reports were already identifying the vigilante gunman's name—with his face perfectly lit by the muzzle-flash of his rifle. Another captured what the media referred to as "The Rhino", actual name Alexander O'Hirn, firing his gatling guns at an acrobatic Spider-Man. Those were the clearest pictures, and rather key to the story. Peter said he'd write the story on the subway, drop it off at the Bugle, and then go to his college classes.

Gwen reminded him about dinner, as if anyone could forget that, and gave him a kiss goodbye. A secret boyfriend had seemed wonderfully exciting, right up until she got caught.

* * *

She waited at the curb, running through possibilities in her mind. They mostly ended with her father saying, 'Gwen, you are grounded until you turn twenty-five,' to which she would reply, 'I'm an adult at eighteen,' and then he would look at her with that a-block-of-iron-would-lose-this-fight look he had and say, 'Don't try me.'

When he arrived, her father was driving a police cruiser, because it wasn't already embarrassing enough. She got in silently, and they drove away.

"Gwen?" he said.

"Yes?"

"Are you alright?"

This wasn't in any of her imaginings. "Am I... alright?"

"You're sneaking out with a boy, you're sleeping through class, you're going to the prinicipal on a regular basis. If you didn't have the grades you do, you'd probably be expelled. What's going on?"

"Lots of things are going on."

"Let's have some specifics."

She sighed, looking down. "It's just been really good with Peter."

"If it's good, why are you so tense all the time?"

"I'm not tense."

"Gwen, I'm your father. You're tense."

"Fine," she grudgingly admitted, "I'm tense."

"Now, tell me what's going on."

The truth was, Gwen had to admit, that the reason she couldn't talk her way through this was her own fault. She didn't like lying to her Father. She was fine lying to random guys at school, to strangers she was trying to get information out of, to people that hadn't raised her. Scratch that, she would have been fine lying to her mother, who hadn't raised her for all that long. The thing is, it wasn't her secret. She kept found out secrets and she kept secrets, but she never gave them away, but at the same time she didn't want to lie.

So, it was time to figure out a good lie and go for it, even though he was her father. The key to a good lie was truth. Every plausible lie was really just a diversion made out of truths. So, she needed a straight-forward truth to keep him distracted, and then he wouldn't suspect anything about what they were really doing.

"Peter's, well, he's having a really rough time."

"Is that so?"

She thought back to a conversation they'd had in confidence. Except, it wasn't the real secret, it was just a minor secret. Sometimes, one of those had to be given up. "This summer, his Uncle Ben died."

"His Uncle?"

"Yeah." Gwen was talking slowly, making sure she didn't say too much, but keeping it natural too. It was normal to talk slowly about such a weighty topic, so it worked for her 'lie'. "He was orphaned when he was three, and his aunt and uncle basically raised him."

"I didn't realize."

"There's more, but, you can't ever tell him this. Not ever, okay?"

"I can keep a secret," her father told her.

"Usually I can too." She thought about that, kept right on thinking about it.

"Gwen?"

"Actually," she decided, "this really is his secret, not mine to tell. Just, he's having a hard time. As for the details, you'd have to ask him, and I don't think he'd tell you."

The car stayed silent. They came to a stop light, then another, and still there was silence. At long last, just before getting home, he deigned to speak. "Thank you for telling me."

* * *

Dinner went well. Gwen was grounded for one month, and Peter could come visit for an hour a day. The next morning, after she'd slept off the all-nighter and the stress, she got back to her previous work, from back before Peter went and got himself—

She cut off the slightest hint of thoughts of him being injured and just focused on the problem. Charting lizard sightings, searching for a pattern to how they were laid out.

In truth, there wasn't a lot to do. She knew the lizard was out there, whether it was a giant lizard or a burgler with a skin disorder, and she needed to get out there on the ground if she wanted to find it. She didn't sneak out, though. It was midday on a weekend, and her father was home. She didn't quite close her door, so that he would know she was in there alone.

So long as she kept the music loud, he'd give up on wanting the door open soon enough. Or she'd get grounded from music, too. That would suck.

Being stuck in her room, she decided to improve her tools. It took far too long to plot things onto maps, and she could only do it well if she was in her room. First, she wrote a script to pin a mess of things to a map, then she set up a server to push it out to her phone and tablet, and Peter's if he decided he wanted it.

Then she started working on some voice recognition. That was not easy. Voice recognition was one of the great problems, but the police dispatch was all verbal, no digital copies to be gotten. So, she worked away, right up until the news turned to an ongoing story.

She turned off the music and turned up the volume just as Peter texted her. There was some man in green and purple flying around blowing things up, and Peter was going after him. By instinct, she grabbed her camera bag and got ready to go, but she had to stop herself. Her father was right out there. He would notice.

She turned to message boards, to twitter, to anything. She had grainy camera-phone footage and contradictory comments, but nothing real. He was out there, on his own. She had to gulp back a rush of bile. The last time Peter had been out there without her, he'd come back with bullet holes. "Not again," she whispered to herself. "It's not going to happen again, he's better than that."

Still, she went back to all the medical guides she'd gotten. Then, she took out the medical kit she'd bought, the custom one with the extremely expensive titanium composite. She lifted the tools, tried to remember the feel of them. Nothing to practice on, but she still wanted to be familiar.

"Gwen," her father called.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I gotta go. I'll be back soon."

She ran out and saw the front door slam. The TV was still on, the volume low. A news chopper was looking down onto a city with smoke coming from dozens of buildings. It cut to a cameraman on the ground, trying to get a shot of Spider-Man darting by, a man on some sort of glider racing after. They were moving too fast, and the camera only caught a blur.

Peter was out there already, and now her father was en-route. Gwen grabbed her bag and her jacket and sprinted down the stairs.

She didn't even try the subway or a taxi, not with the way things were out there. Instead, she went down to the bike-rack, found a lock with a shackle-and-combo, and started cracking it. Those were easy, that being the reason they weren't recommended for bike chains, and she was on her way in under a minute.

It was providence that the direction she was going was largely on a slight downhill, because she could not have been making good time, otherwise. Gwen was by no means a biker, and when she came to the Brooklyn Bridge, even that slight rise was a noticeable problem.

She let up a bit on the other side, catching her breath, then hurrying on again. When arrived, the place was bedlam. The fighting was over, but the problems weren't. There were fires all over the place, and too many panicked people in the way of fire engines trying to get through.

Gwen made her way to where it had all started—where it had first been reported, at least—and worked from there. This was the hard part, where there were plenty of questions and no good answers. The people she interviewed didn't want to give useful responses, either.

"He just swooped in from nowhere!" was useless.

It took thirty people for her to get any confidence of which direction this new villain—the news had dubbed him "The Goblin"—came from. That mattered, mattered a lot. People who didn't have to concern themselves with streets tended to just go in straight lines. She'd had to coach Peter about taking alternate routes, so that nobody else could find him as easily as she had, or he would have been doing that, too.

The exit, the direction he had finally fled, was much more known, as there had been hundreds of camera-phones tracking the battle by that point, but that was still only two data points. Hopefully, they wouldn't matter. Hopefully, this threat would be handled quickly and easily.

Gwen didn't want to rely on hopefully.

Along with all the interviews was the evidence collection. Those bright red burning bombs appeared to be a combination of incendiary and concussion devices, which was an odd choice. Shrapnel bombs were much more dangerous, albeit less flashy. Perhaps this Goblin was just going for show. On the other hand, the fires left behind from incendiary grenades caused much more panic, so perhaps that was his goal. Flames, clouds of smoke, and chaos throughout the city.

Whatever his goal, the important part was getting evidence. She searched around every blast site she could get near, gathering any fragments that might have initially come from the bomb. There wasn't much, but there wasn't nothing, either.

Then, she took the subway home. As expected, her father was still gone. He'd be gone for a while, after a day like that. In fact, it would probably be an all-nighter.

She texted Peter to come by and got to work. She was reading up on chemical analysis when he climbed in the window. His outfit was already gone, replaced by the T-shirt and jeans he usually wore, along with a hoody so nobody would spot his face while he was out.

Gwen spun her chair around and ran over to him. She grabbed him tight, gave him a quick, hard kiss, and leaned back, still held close by his hand pressing the small of her back against him.

"Peter, you were amazing out there, absolutely amazing."

"He got away," Peter pointed out.

"We'll get him. Don't worry, I've already got some leads."

"You do?"

"Well," Gwen said slowly, thinking back on how little she actually had, "I have the start of some leads."

"What've you got?"

"A few hundred interviews, a bit about which direction he came from and went to. Oh, did you get any cameras up?"

Peter reached into his bag and pulled out seven cheap, digital cameras. "Two got blown up while he was lobbing those bombs everywhere."

"These will help, then."

"So, not many leads?"

"Actually, I have something." Gwen walked over to her desk, where she had a pile of fragments on a tray in front of the keyboard. "These are fragments of his bombs."

Peter leaned past her looking at the pieces and the research up on her screen. "A chemical analysis? I can get into the lab at the university and do this. There's a mass spec that should be able to handle this just fine. You're hoping to find a manufacturer?"

"There's more to it than that." Gwen picked up one of the smaller fragments and offered it to him. "Squeeze it between your fingers."

He gave her an odd look, but did as he was told. It squished a bit, then crumbled. "What is this stuff?"

"It's explosives."

"I know it's a bomb, but—"

"No, it's explosives. It took me a bit to figure out why there wasn't any shrapnel at all. This guy's got a fancy little device here, and I'm fairly sure how it works." Gwen sat down and started loading up camera-phone footage she'd pulled from youtube. "So, these are the things he's throwing, and you can occasionally get a glimpse of something spraying out when the bomb impacts."

"Alright, I see what you're saying. So what does that mean?"

"What he's got is a bomb shell that's the actual explosive, no metal body whatsoever, not even a thin cannister that gets destroyed. I think there also are no electronics, it's a combination of det-cord and mechanics for the trigger. That can be made out of most anything, specifically out of this material, this fairly-hard explosive this shell is made from. Then, inside of it, is something similar to napalm."

"Seriously? Napalm?"

"Similar. From the videos, it looks like it burns both hotter and faster, but it's still a flammable agent designed to stick to things."

Peter nodded along as she showed him the timing of a few videos that showed the things ignite and burn out. "Alright, so I need to not get splashed with those even more than I thought."

"Yeah. There's actually very little explosive, just enough to throw the incendiary everywhere. Thing is, nobody on earth makes a weapon like this, officially."

Peter grinned. "Homemade explosives. If we can do a proper analysis, we might be able to figure out where the component parts were gotten from, and then track down the man making the bombs."

"Exactly."

"Gwen, have I told you you're a genius?"

"A couple of times, but you can say it again."

He leaned in for a kiss, instead. Unfortunately, the sound of keys at the front door interrupted them. Peter dashed for the window, but she stopped him. She scooped the fragments into a bag, handed it to him, and gave him a kiss goodbye.

"Gwen," called her father from the front door, "why is your door closed."

She rushed over and opened it. "Sorry, Dad. Forgot."

"Don't forget again. I've got to go back to work, I just came back for my laptop, but you're still grounded while I'm gone."

"I know," Gwen said, not really meaning it. If she had to head out, she would. On the other hand, she had work to do in her room, so she might stay put.

She texted Peter to work on the chemical analysis while she worked on clarifying the images. The shots from Peter's cameras was almost as bad as the camera-phone footage, but it looked slightly usable once cleaned up. If she got enough, Gwen might get a proper look at this guy, and more specifically at his glider. That was another thing she thought might be a way to track him down.

* * *

"The glider's a bust."

Peter looked over her shoulder at the model that was rotating on her screen. It was a 3D representation of the glider, or as best a one she could emulate. "Man, that's impressive."

"That," she said glaring, "is seven hours of wasted time."

"You're sure it's useless?"

She spun the model, stopping it so they were looking at the bottom. "See how that's a flat sheet of metal? It's not a flat sheet of metal, I just don't have enough resolution from any of the photos to get anything. No markings of any sort. No indentations, no striations, no aerodynamic grooves. You saw it up close, it had grooves along the bottom, right?"

Peter sighed. "Yeah, I suppose it did. Not as if I can get anything useful from memory alone."

"No, it would only help if we could get more exact measurements. Or a fragment. Another chemical analysis would be useful."

Peter looked at another of her three screens. "The one we have isn't... completely useless."

She sighed, and nodded. "No, no it's not. So, there's something. Your analysis of the explosive."

He set his hands on her shoulders, giving the start of a shoulder massage with his thumbs. "It's not my analysis. It's a chemical analysis of the fragments you collected."

She set a hand on his, and his thumb stopped working. "Thanks, Peter. Also, don't stop, this feels amazing."

She sighed, ready to settle back into the back massage, then was tossed into the air. She gave a whoop of surprise, then was settled onto her bed, face down. "Peter—?"

"Shh." He leaned over her, and went back to massaging her.

Gwen let out a heavy groan of relief as the pressure of his hands seemed to force the tension out of her. She rested her head on the pillow and let him work. He massaged down her back, then crept his fingers under her shirt and started back up, her shirt slowly rising as he massaged up her bare skin. Gwen let him go slowly, wanting this to last a while, even though she was a little anxious to get to the obvious next step.

The front door clanged open.

"Dang," Peter said, pulling his hands clear.

"Fuck," Gwen pointed out, "is the right reply. You need to learn to swear."

He had already started heading to the window, but he paused there, one foot on the ledge, the sunlight haloing him. "Fuck is what I want to do, not what I want to say."

Gwen's mouth dropped. "Oh, I like this more forward Peter Parker."

"That's good, because—"

"Gwen," came from just outside the door, "how are you?"

Her father swung open her door, but he didn't quite step in. She looked back to the window, which was now empty. The smile of moments earlier turned to a grimace. She was all ready to go, and Peter wasn't coming back anytime soon. "I'm grounded," she snapped. "What does it look like?"

He gave that hardworn, exhausted smile, and she was immediately sorry. She wasn't yelling because she was grounded, she was yelling because about five seconds earlier she'd been getting an excellet backrub that was a prelude to quite a bit more, and now Peter was gone. "You'll be fine. Look, this is going to be a long week. I'm trusting you. Even though you're grounded, you're gonna be on your own a lot."

Gwen climbed off the bed and walked over to her father. "What are you talking about?"

"Look, it's bad."

"The Goblin thing fighting Spider-Man?"

"It may have looked like he was fighting Spider-Man," her father said, "but he was mostly hitting cop cars."

"He was?"

He nodded. "Lots of people injured. I'd still be there, but the chief ordered that people keep trying to get sleep. I'm trying to set a good example for my men by catching a few hours back home, visiting my family, just like they should be."

Gwen flashed back to not even a week earlier, to Peter lying on her floor, gunshot and bloody, and now she saw her father there. She lurched forward and wrapped him in a desperate hug.

"Gwen, are you alright?"

She pressed her cheek against his chest. "As long as you are, I will be."

He pulled her close as well. "I will be, I promise."

Her father kissed the top of Gwen's head, then slowly pulled from her embrace. She watched him walk to his bedroom, then looked back to her computer. Targetting cops. She had to find this guy, had to make sure he was taken down before he could do anymore harm.

There still wasn't a lot to go on, but the idea of what the Goblin's target had been gave her something. Back through the photos, this time checking for damage to police cars. A few minutes of that and Gwen snarled at herself for being wasteful. It was fine to be cautious most days, but this wasn't most days, this time it was urgent.

She started digging through botnets she'd previously uncovered, pinging laptop locations. Before long, she found one in the police department. Plenty of cops had computers they didn't secure properly. It wasn't completely open, but it was a good start, since the police network did have genuinely better security against outside threats than inside threats. Shoddy work, that. Proper admins would secure against all threats, but Gwen wasn't one to complain about their complacency right then.

She used that laptop to hack another, and then started pulling reports from the past twenty-four hours. Her mouth went dry as she sent them through a script to find ones of damage to police property and injuries to police officers. Two hundred and seventy.

A sigh of relief came out. The first one was a police bike getting a bent rim on a curb. Not anything real. Not a full two-seventy, then.

She started sorting, plotting the relevant ones. It wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. Forty-seven police cars set on fire or blown up. Thirty police officers injured. Two police precincts burning.

Her eyes hovered over the thirty injuries. It would be easy to follow up, find out how they did in the hospital. Stay focused, Gwen told herself. The Goblin isn't at the hospital, he's in his workshop. It had to be a workshop, too. He had to have somewhere extensive to build those things.

She plotted the locations of every record of damage or injury onto her map, but realized immediately it was lacking. She went back to a video she remembered, and sure enough, there was a burning police car on Brooklyn's Park Avenue. They hadn't all been reported. So much for saving time.

She went back to the video, adding everything she could spot, while her crawler sometimes sent her a report from the police department, newly added to their system. If she gave them long enough, they'd probably get everything reported, but she didn't have that sort of patience.

Two hours later, she had everything she expected to find plotted. It was a disgusting trail of green dots along the path that Peter and the Goblin fought through the city. She changed them to color-code by time, and found that it basically followed a progression from one end to the next, with the odd ones out probably having mis-reported times.

No luck there, she already knew where he came from. Except, there was one dot north of that first sighting. It was from a police report, which she loaded up. Police car on fire and it was—Gwen's eyes widened—called in over 911. Not a report by the officer, a report by a civilian.

She started searching blogs, twitter, and youtube, and soon turned up a video of the car at that location. A couple guys were circling it, taking photos and talking. A girl stepped in frame, posing in front of the cop car, like it was all too funny. Gwen blocked out the troublemakers—not surprising about the response, considering the neighborhood—and focused on the fire. It was burning hot, warping the metal. The people weren't coming near it for long, but it suddenly cooled to a more normal flame part way through the video.

That was the first site hit by the Goblin, and her father was right: it hit the police, not Spider-Man.

She called Peter, and had all of the map annotation pushed to his phone.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Check your phone."

"I'm on my phone. Oh yeah, maps. What's this?"

"The spots hit by the Goblin. Peter, he's targetting cops, not you. Those are all injured cops or burning police property."

Peter's sharp inhalation sounded through the line. "Oh no."

Gwen felt her eyes tearing up and had to fight to keep her voice steady as she continued. "My father's home, taking a mandatory rest. In about an hour, he's going to go back out there. You need to find this guy."

"I don't even know where to look," Peter said, sounding angry and worried all at once. "I've got nothing out here."

"I highlighted one point. That was the first target he hit. It looks like he was flying from north of there, and then he hit every police car he could."

"I'm on it Gwen!" he cried, and she could hear wind rushing by.

"Be careful," she said, knowing he wouldn't be able to hear her while webswinging.

She texted him to come by later, and then she got back to work. Spaces in the Bronx that could house a workshop. That gave her pause. A workshop, or a secret workshop?

This wasn't like the Vulture's suit, which could have been viewed at an attempt as useful hardware, this was the manufacture of a massive amount of customized incendiaries and explosives. This was clearly weapons.

She started checking abandoned factories, loading up property records time and again. There were more than a few possibilities, and she pushed them out to Peter as she turned them up, along with pictures and blueprints when she could get them. None looked promising, though. They were just empty factories, rusting warehouses, and other wasted properties. He could be anywhere, but that somehow didn't feel right.

She looked at the list of properties, realizing she'd basically, after her last pass, widened it to include everyone. That was useless. Motive, means, opportunity were the criteria for showing someone was a criminal, and her father insisted on motive being the key to catching someone.

Gwen sat back in her chair, staring up at the best shot she had of the Goblin. That ugly metal face. No benefit was to be had in crafting a face on a mask. It could have been a blank slate, as Iron Man had chosen, but instead it was hideous. Behind that display was something she did not yet understand. Something motivated a man to those lengths.

Some part of that motive involved the police. He hated the police because... well, a lot of people hated the police. But he wasn't just anybody, he was a very clever man. Or a very rich man, who employed very clever men. She started scanning the news from days earlier, anything with a relation to the police.

There was always a ton of news, good and bad, about the NYPD. They had enemies and they had allies, and none of them like to be quiet. She was sinking into that morass when her father walked in to say goodbye.

Gwen jumped up and gave him a hug. "Be careful, Daddy."

For a moment he just blinked, frozen in her arms. He wrapped his arms around her squeezing her back. "I will, Gwen, you know that."

She nodded and let him go, thinking that she knew quite the opposite. There were whispers all around the station about a new police unit to handle superpowered people, and while the unit was rumored the prospective leader was certain: John Stacy. He was a captain, and he still acted like he belonged on the streets. Not because he was careless, but because he valued his men over himself. He would never let them risk themselves while he stayed safe. She expected that he wouldn't even go to the station, that he'd just go right out onto the streets.

She scrubbed away tears and got back to her computer. She had to find something. Except, there was nothing. It was just rich men making annoyed comments that made the news, not anyone actually dangerous. Up there in her room, there was nothing.

Gwen looked to the closed door. It took about zero seconds to decide she needed to get down to street level. Camera bag over her shoulder, she headed out. This time, she took the subway instead of stealing a bike, and was soon in the Bronx. The burned out cop car was taped off, nervous cops all around. She got to somewhere they wouldn't see and started taking pictures. In part, she wanted to start her search where the attacks began, but she knew in her heart that that wasn't her only motive. If this story ever went to the Bugle, she wanted a shot of the site of the first attack.

That was what set their work apart from the start. Peter hadn't just brought the Bugle pictures of Spider-Man fighting the Vulture, he'd brought them a detailed history of how Adrian Toomes fought with his partner, wrecked his old studio, and went on a rampage, all while living in a tiny, dirty, one-bedroom apartment. The entire story, start to finish. Sure, the Bugle had edited the writing to make Spider-Man sound worse, but they'd still told the whole story, not just the bits where things exploded.

They would want that first police car. As for Gwen, she wanted to start there and backtrack.

She walked north, taking pictures every so often. The world looked different through a lense. She held that camera up, and instantly she was considering the elements not just as buildings, but as parts of a composition, as parts of a story. There was the blocking of red of the left third, which set off the broad blue sky and the wide avenue. Yet at once, there was the corner the Goblin must have shot around, trailing thin white smoke from the engine on his glider.

Except, she didn't know where he had turned, so she just kept walking, taking occasional pictures, and then she got the shot she needed. She adjusted her angle to catch a glimmer of white, peeking from behind a row of buildings, a broad low building that she'd not even considered. That artistic, curved rooftop housed the Oscorp Research Facility. Oscorp had been founded in New York, and while most companies kept their headquarters in the city but moved their operations somewhere less expensive, Oscorp kept its research close to home.

It was in the right place, it was easily capable of making everything in question, it was a company that had major military contracts and thus surely did develop weapons, and it even had motive. Orborn did, at least. Three weeks earlier, there had been a warrant carried out on Oscorp Global Headquarters, over in Manhattan, digging for some supposedly incriminating record. One of the spats of yelling at the police that Gwen had skimmed through was Norman Osborne, yelling that the police had gone too far, that they'd see what came of pushing him. He actually said that. 'They'll see what comes from trying to push me around.'

There hadn't been audio, just a transcript, but Gwen tried to imagine what sort of man said 'They'll see' without sounding like a mad villain. Before she could dial him, Peter called.

"You got something?" she said as she picked up.

"Nothing."

Gwen sighed. For an instant, she'd wished he'd found someone else. "It's Oscorp."

"What?"

"Oscorp, or at least Norman Orborn, is behind this."

"Are you sure?"

Gwen paused, then gathered her nerve and replied as honestly as she could. "One-hundred percent? No. But sure? Yes. Check it out, Parker. Somewhere in that facility, there's a Goblin."

He took a moment to think, but he said he'd go in, then ended the call. She put her phone back in and started towards the broad, shining building. She took a dozen pictures of it peering through the gaps between other buildings as she approached, hoping she was right. Time was getting short. Nobody went on a spree like that without a yearning for more. He'd take to the skies again, attack cops again, and when he did her father would be right there, in the thick of it. This had to be the right location, this had to be a chance for Peter to end it.

For her, all it meant was waiting. Peter was nowhere to be seen, and Oscorp lay silent. It was Sunday, so all they had was a minimal level of security. Everything else lay dormant. That tugged at Gwen's thoughts. If the Goblin were in there, he would leave a sign.

She got her tablet out, linked back to her computer. It was a trade-off, taking the latency of the connection back to her computer, but gaining all that computational power. Also, it meant not lugging around a heavy laptop, and her camera was heavy enough already.

She started slow, just poking around the edges, looking for a way into a system she'd never considered touching. Hacking the police was a serious concern, but this was far beyond that, this was national infrastructure. Specifically, this was the power grid. Not tampering with it, just getting a reading. Oscorp was on the forefront of technology, including the fact that it was a major manufacturer and advocate for smart meters, which meant all its facilities had them. If she could get some historical data, she could find out if the research center had more than the usual power draw for a Sunday.

It was slow, getting into that system carefully, but it wasn't impossible. She was hitting the two least secure parts of the system. The meter itself could be intercepted while it was sending data to the power company, without actually hacking into the power company or tampering with the meter. That gave her a stream of data to log.

The records were just an archive, not the live system. In a fit of actual good security practices, the archives were completely disconnected from the control system, which meant they didn't have the same over-the-top security that the power grid as a whole had. She was working at that when someone sat down beside her. She nearly jumped out of her chair, then sighed away the startlement.

"Peter, what are you doing here?"

"I looked as best I could without alerting security, but that place is huge. So, I thought I'd join you. Besides, I'm starving."

She glanced at the five overpriced sandwiches he'd bought. She was at a coffee shop across from an Oscorp facility, which didn't make for cheap, filling meals. All the same, five sandwiches was a lot. While he started eating, she explained what she'd been working on.

"That's clever," he said around bites. "When can we expect a result?"

"Soon," she told him. "I'm trying to figure out their filing system. See, I can get to the files, but not through their front-end, and so the labels are all just numbers to me. Once I figure out which one's Oscorp, I can download those files and get some details."

"When will that happen?"

"Five minutes, twelve seconds."

"Exactly?"

Gwen grinned. "They dump another set of archives every four hours. I can check for what matches my own readings from the meter, and voila."

"You're too smart. You know that, right? You're so smart, it's causing problems."

Gwen gave him a kiss on the cheek. "And you're too kind. I'll stop believing you, if you always shower me with compliments."

"I can stop. Here, how's this: 'You're alright. I like you a little.'"

Gwen slapped him upside the head, and he pretended that it hurt. They kept teasing each other as they waited for the data dump, and then it came: four hours of records into the archive. Her crawler started, and in seventeen seconds she had the numbers for the Oscorp Research Facility. She put them into a database, made sure they were right, and plotted them out.

"So, it looks like it's always this active?" Peter asked.

She frowed, skimming back, week by week. Five weeks back, the power-draw fell off, and then it stayed off. "No, it is not."

"Five weeks ago." Peter frowned. "So, he's in there, but we don't know where."

"Yes, yes we do."

Gwen split the graphs into a dozen smaller graphs, all up at once. She deleted everything but sundays and showed a year's data.

"What's that?"

"The research center is a complex, not just one space. With the sort of power it uses, it's got seperate meters for each subsection. They keep them pooled together because it's one client and pays one bill, but the details are still there. And, as you can see, the excess power draw is all from... section 1-4-7-4-9-2-0-3-6-4-4-3. And I don't have any idea what that is."

They stared at the almost-useful screen. It was Peter who broke the silence. "Can you show only that section, for the entire year?"

Gwen did so, looking at the various peaks. "Oh, very clever. And now we look for what area would have been active when that section had major spikes. First, let me cut out every spike that was also a spike for the whole facility, and, there we go, seven times in the last year."

She pulled up news footage from those days on her tablet while Peter searched on his phone. They both found it at the same time. "Agricultural Redesign?"

Peter met her eyes equanimously. "Well, it's probably a secret lab, so why not Agricultural Redesign?"

Gwen nodded. "Now, promise me you'll be careful."

He lifted a hand, three fingers up. "Scout's Honor."

"You weren't a boyscout. Were you?"

He grinned and rushed out onto the street. Gwen smiled as she watched him go, then got serious. This was the big one. This was the story that would put them over the top. Nobody was there. Nobody had this but them. There weren't going to be camera videos of the fight from start to finish, there was going to be her record and nothing else. She was going to show the downfall of the menace that had burned forty-seven cars and hospitalized thirty cops, and it would put her on the map.

Well, it would put Peter on the map, since he was the one who was on the byline. Maybe she should have told her father about her new job. He would have flipped, though. In fact, the thought of her being right there, right then, would have given the man a heart attack. She decided not to worry about that quite yet. She went outside, set up, and started shooting pictures as Peter launched himself across the street, onto the Oscorp grounds. She got quite a few good shots of him going in, then swapped that almost-full roll of film for another. It was time to wait.

She wasn't sure what to hope for. If all went well, it would end inside. And then they wouldn't have pictures to sell.

Whatever she should have hoped for, Gwen was unsurprised when, after twenty minutes of gnawing at her fingernails, a wall exploded in flames and the Goblin went flying out of it.

She started taking pictures a second later than she wished she had, but they were still good shots. The Goblin was damaged, his left arm blackened, the metal slightly torn. He circled back to close with Peter, and she got some good combat shots. Peter did flips around that glider like it was nothing.

Her heart clenched when some smoking red spheres, each the size of a large marble, were thrown Peter's way, but he sprayed webbing at them, and the thick mass on the side nearest him was enough to send the explosion away. He leapt through a haze of smoke and flame, and came out unscathed, slugging the Goblin in the jaw. It would be over soon. It had to be.

Then she heard the sirens. She lowered the camera and looked over, seeing patrol cars speeding onto the street, parking at those haphazard-looking angles that looked chaotic but that Gwen knew let them all drive off quickly and easily. There were officers coming onto the street, trying to get people clear.

Gwen ducked into the alley beside the building and stepped behind a dumpster while a cop walked past, and then she was back out by the entrance. The fight had moved, now taking place over the bulk of the Oscorp building, each explosion staining the white exterior an ugly black. Peter was leaping about like a madman, dodging explosions with ease, and then he leapt high and got a grip on the glider.

The Goblin went into a spin, then spun even faster. Peter went flying, twisting about in the air and landing in a comfortable crouch on the street.

"Pity you can't fly!" the Goblin yelled, sending himself almost straight upward.

Peter leapt high, almost sprinted up a wall, and went hurtling after the glider. A thread of webbing shot out, snagging a fin on the side of the glider. Another went low, spraying a thick web across the side of a building. The glider jerked to a halt, and then was on a parabolic arc defined by the limits of the webbing. The Goblin twisted, hurtling explosives behind him, but he was racing too fast, too out of control, and the bombs sailed past Peter and hit the pavement below.

The arc of the glider continued. Gwen tracked ahead and ran into the street, lining up a shot. She got it just as they passed her line, straight down to Peter, and straight past him to where the Goblin struggled with his glider.

At the last instant, the Goblin managed to twist a little aside, skimming across the ground, and then his glider glanced off the pavement and he was tumbling.

Peter was on him immediately, "How's that flying working out for you lately?"

The Goblin surged upright, throwing Peter like a ragdoll. Gwen ducked back into the alley as she snapped pictures of the duel. That was the first time the Goblin had really shown his strength. Before it had all been explosives, but it seemed his suit was more than just armor. It didn't amount to much, though. Spider-Man didn't even land, he just checked his momentum with webs and went hurtling towards the Goblin again.

"Let's try that again," Peter called as he returned. This time, the Goblin didn't manage much of anything. He was swinging at air, Peter almost casually dodging his blows.

"It's not about you, anyways," the Goblin bellowed.

"It isn't? Man, my girlfriend said that, but I didn't believe her. It's different with you, though. You make me feel like I can trust you."

The Goblin wasn't paying attention to the banter. He reached down to his waist, lifted a hand filled with little red orbs, and said, "It's about THEM!"

He spun about, flinging the orbs. Peter screamed, leapt, and began launching webbing like mad. Orb after glowing orb was pegged by webbing, dragged down in the middle of the street, but there were too many. Hundreds of the things, flung at the cops that had blocked of the area. Cars ignited. Men screamed.

The Goblin laughed. "Now they see."

Peter stared at the mayhem, aghast. Gwen leaned out for the shot. Peter, standing tall. The Goblin, just past him, in profile, a hand at his side to draw out more deadly, explosive beads. Beyond them, a cluster of cops, fleeing.

"You can't save them all," the Goblin crowed.

"I will," Peter said, and leapt forward.

Still taking pictures, Gwen felt her heart freeze as the moment crystallized. Peter was going to save them all. He was past the Goblin, weaving a web between his hands. The beads, thrown to spread wide, were still a tight cluster, and he caught them, every last one. He spun ever-thickening layers of webbing about them, trying to protect himself. They burst. Fire erupted, and Peter went hurtling into a brutal roll across the pavement. The Goblin danced as he tugged yet more bombs from his seemingly endless supply.

And a little blast of webbing slipped into that gap, straight into the gap where the bombs were pulled from. The Goblin's face turned to terror. The explosion from his mechanical armor was twice the size of what Peter had been hit by. The Goblin was slammed into the ground, flame pouring from the missing side of his armor, black smoke roiling skyward. He screamed in agony.

Through the smoke, Peter stepped. His suit was blackened, cracking and breaking across his chest and down his legs. The only hits of blue and red were on his head and down near his toes. He sprayed webbing over the flames to smother them. "You'll live, Osborn. You'll live."

The Goblin pulled himself up on one arm, still glaring with that same madness. "You can't save them all!"

Peter stopped in surprise, then looked aside, alerted by a sudden roar. The glider was shooting past, trailing flame in its wake. Mad laughs tumbled from the Goblin. Peter sent webbing, caught the glider and wrestled it careening into the side of a building, but it kept spraying bombs as it went, hurling them out towards the police. Through the smoke, Gwen saw the orbs flying towards a cluster of men in uniform. Out front of them, Captain John Stacy was shoving the others away, trying to get them into better cover. One man stumbled, and her father stood over him, shielding him, as flames descended.

Gwen screamed, running down the street. She reached him as the officers did. They were slapping at him with fire blankets, trying to put him out. He rolled over, his blackened back giving way to his untouched face. His eyes were wide, rolling, then they focused on Gwen, and he smiled slightly. "Gwen, there you are. Is it that late already?"

"Dad."

He blinked, his eyes seeming to clear up. "I'm, oh."

Her father's words turned to gasps of pain, and then he screamed. He didn't stop screaming as they loaded him into the ambulance. She forced her way in as well, crouching beside him, refusing to be anywhere else. His screaming continued most of the way to the hospital, and when it finally stopped, the silence was not welcome.


	4. Legacy

The Bugle was chaos. The bellows were constant, and to Gwen, inscrutable. People wanted things, but the things they wanted didn't make sense. She hadn't looked up anything on newspaper jargon. Most places, there was a reference online somewhere. Normally, she would have read it beforehand, but she just didn't care right then. She looked over the area, about to ask, when she finally managed to spot a sign with the editor's name on it: John Jonah Jameson. It didn't say editor-in-chief, but it didn't need to, not with a name like that on the door.

Gwen walked straight through the chaos. There was a secretary, but Gwen wasn't in the mood. Ignoring the woman's protestations, Gwen opened the door and stepped inside. Two old men were arguing. One, she recognized as Jameson, and the other looked a little older and calmer..

Jameson finished his tirade and looked her way. "Who the hell are you?"

She reached into her bag and pulled out a large envelope. "I've got some pictures, and a story."

Jameson glared past her. "Betty, why are you letting people just walk in here?"

"She just barged in, sir," the secretary said.

Gwen looked at the other man, the one who was keeping his cool, and handed the envelope to him. She took a seat.

Betty spoke up again. "Should I call security, sir?"

"Yes!" Jameson snapped.

"No," the other man replied.

"Did you just buy my paper, Robbie?" Jameson said, then looked back to Betty. "Call security."

"Yes, sir," Betty said.

Robbie spoke up again. "Betty, don't call security. J, look at these."

Jameson started mumbling curses under his breath as he snatched the pictures from Robbie's hand. He saw the first one, and his mumbling slowed. He looked at a second, and the cursing stopped entirely. He rifled through the rest. "Betty, get accounts. Who took these?"

"I did," Gwen said, "but Peter Parker helped, too."

"You did?" Jameson crowed. "Well that really helps make out a check. I need a name, girl!"

"Gwen Stacy."

He was laying out the pictures on the desk, an expression that twisted somewhere between excitement and irritation on his face.

"You took these, not Parker?" Robbie asked.

"Yeah."

"You're the good one, then," Robbie said, starting to smile. "Always thought it looked like two photographers. No offense to Parker, but if these are yours, you're amazing and he's just good enough."

"Um, thanks. He does the writing, and gets the extra angles. It's just a different job."

Jameson laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. "Nice excuses you got for him. These are perfect." He straightened, spreading his hands as though he were unrolling a banner. "Spider Fails New York's Finest. It'll be national. Hell, this'll go worldwide. Are you seeing this shot, Robbie?" He pointed at the picture of the Goblin's glider sailing towards a row of cops, restrained by one of Spider-Man's webs, but still send flaming bombs into the crowd of officers.

Gwen stood up and leaned forward on the desk, making sure that she was in the way. "The title is Assault on New York's Finest. And that's not the cover picture. The story is in there."

"Great," Jameson said, "now little girls are buying my newspaper from me. The title's whatever I say the title is."

"It's a tribute to the police officer who died yesterday afternoon or it's going to another paper," Gwen said. Seeing his glare, she smiled for the first time that day. "I'd fucking love you to try me on this. I'm really in the mood for that shit."

Jameson stood up tall, glaring, and Gwen glared right back. "You think you tell me what the story is. What gives you the right?"

Robbie set a hand on Jameson's shoulder. "Uh, J, you recall the name of the man that actually died out there."

"Of course, he was-" Even Jameson had the sense to restrain himself, at last. His eyes stayed hard, fixed on Gwen as he spoke. "Robbie, set Stacy up with one of our writers to clean up whatever they gave us. Betty will have your check shortly. And don't waste any damn time! This is gonna be on the mainpage in thirty minutes, and it'll be the banner for the morning run. Have it on my desk in twenty."

* * *

Gwen took a taxi. She didn't want to sit down in a subway, with all those people, jostling elbows and making noise. The cabbie tried to talk, and she just looked out the window, hoping he would take the hint. Fortunately, he did, and it was a relatively quiet ride to Peter's house.

As she went up the narrow walk, May opened the door. The woman's lined face drew concern better than any cartoonist. "Gwen, dear, come in."

She was perfect, right then. No words of consolation, or questions. She didn't ask if Gwen was fine, or how she was doing. All she did was promise to bring some snacks up to Peter's room. Gwen nearly cried right in front of her. She ended up stopping outside of Peter's room and wiping away tears before going in.

The big surprise was to see him up and about, walking around. He could have come to the Bugle with her. "Peter, how are you fine?"

He glanced down at his legs, which had been badly burned only the day before, and they'd been in better shape than his chest. "That is something of a mystery. I mean, I've been able to recover quickly ever since I got bit-you remember those bullets-" she shuddered at the thought "-but this was really something else. I just woke up an hour ago, feeling fine. I mean, I overslept and I'm still a little tired-ravenous, really-but fine."

She grabbed his shirt and pulled him close, getting a quick scent of him. He wrapped his arms around her. "How are you doing, Gwen?"

She kicked his shin. He wasn't as good at it as his aunt.

"Sorry, I, uh, don't really know what to do. What should I do?"

She pushed away and sat in the chair at his desk. Peter's desk was odd, for such a smart guy. Perhaps that was the secret, though. He was so much smarter than her, he didn't worry about the same things. Just papers and books, nothing else. No computer. If he needed the internet, he had his phone, but he didn't use a computer for any of his work.

Well, he used computers in the lab. He was perfectly competent with them, he just didn't keep one at home. Papers and books, everything hand-written. It helped him think, he said. Gwen picked up a pencil, looking at the NYU logo. He already had pencils from the university he was going to attend next year.

She heard the bed creak as he sat down on it. His voice was soft when he spoke. "When Uncle Ben died, I didn't do well. I went off the rails, really. And what helped me get back was, well, what I do, helping people." He wouldn't say aloud that he was Spider-Man, lest Aunt May hear him. "That's not a real solution, though. I just don't know how to help."

Gwen glanced back, and right then there was a knock at the door. Gwen looked that way instead. "Come in."

Aunt May pushed the door open, a tray held before her. "It's just some finger sandwiches, some veggies, and a little lemonade. Oh, I know it's not summer, not the right weather for lemonade, but I always like it. You can have water, if you'd rather."

"Lemonade is great, Mrs. Parker."

"Well I'm glad. And if you want anything else, I'll be just downstairs." Her face hardened up just a touch, probably as close to a glare as she came. "But leave the door open. There are still rules in my house."

Gwen smiled, nodding her acceptance, and May only left the door open a crack when she left. Gwen giggled. "She does know I've got an entire two-bedroom apartment to myself, doesn't she?"

Peter tried to laugh along, but it wasn't very strong, and she couldn't keep the humor, either.

"What can you do?" Gwen said. She sipped at the lemonade, which was just a little tart, mostly sweet. "You can get a nice suit and take me to the funeral on Friday."

"Of course."

Gwen picked up one of the sandwiches, and tried to think of anything other than the funeral, but that was clearly impossible.

* * *

The funeral procession was beyond massive. Every cop in existence wearing their nicest dress uniforms, standing solemnly along the streets leading to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Inside, the room was awash with rich black suits from supposed friends of the family. Not that Gwen had ever consider the mayor or the governor a friend, yet still they were right up at the front.

Opposite them, on the left of the aisle rather than the right, was the less glamorous crowd, the actual friends. There was Gwen's mother, who would have fit better with the mayor than with Gwen, along with some of mother's friends. There was an aunt and uncle and two cousins, who were family even if they weren't overly close. At the other end sat six police officers that had been partners to John Stacy at one time or another. Alongside then was a guy that Gwen knew as Uncle Thompson, who had been friends with her father since before she was born.

Gwen and her friends were between the family and the friends. Peter looked perfect, just as she'd asked. He had on a suit and tie, and he'd even had it tailored so it fit perfectly. There was Tiny, who probably didn't realize his suit didn't even close to fit. he kept looking around like he wasn't quite sure what was going on. Liz was there, looking nice in a black dress, as well as Sally, who looked much the same.

And right at the center of all of them sat Gwen, like a cancer of inappropriateness. It made her want to grin, the looks she was getting. It wasn't their funeral. The police wanted to claim it and- alright, she didn't begrudge them. But her mother, the mayor, all those people, hell with them. Just her and the cops, everyone else could shove it.

As such, she was wearing a sun dress. White, with patterns of flowers and leaves in pastel colors, getting thicker towards the bottom, where it was a mixture of a soft green with some blues and yellows mixed in. Because that was what she wanted to wear. In fact, that was what she was going to keep right on wearing. She made up her mind, right then and there. Well, with pants, most days. Getting swung across the city by web while not wearing pants had been found to be a bad idea.

The service went fine, as the priest surely wasn't going to say anything. It was the walk back up the aisle that was problematic. The buffer Gwen had engineered of Peter and Tiny between Gwen and her mother had disappeared, and there was nothing to stop a few whispers.

"What are you wearing?" her mother asked.

Gwen ignored her.

"You are making a spectacle of yourself. It's ridiculous."

Gwen decided she was done ignoring anyone. Her restraint, it seemed, was worn thin of late. "Shut the fuck up."

"What did you just say?" her mother asked, forgetting to whisper.

If they weren't going to whisper, she might as well go straight to yelling. "I said shut the fuck up!"

The choir, which had been singing something, tumbled into discord. They tried to recover, but it was clearly a wreck.

"You little-"

"You know what, mom? You've got no right to be here. You're lucky they let you into the cathedral, you bitch. Now stop talking at my father's funeral."

Her mother snapped back just as angrily. "Let me in, when you're wearing that happy little dress. It's a funeral!"

Gwen tried to glare, but found that the muscles on her face wouldn't do anything but scrunch up into the ugliest crying ever. She could barely see past the tears. "Daddy hated it that I wore black! He told me to wear something brighter, so fuck you and your fucking idea of what I should wear. He wants me to wear something happy, and I'll fucking well wear it you stupid hag."

Everyone was silent. The procession had stopped. Peter had a hand on her shoulder. He leaned in, and decided to put in his two cents, a rather risky proposition. Perhaps being Spider-Man had made him fearless even outside of a fight. "Come on, Gwen. She's not worth your time."

Gwen managed a bit of a pained smile through her tears at that. He was right, of course. Helen Stacy wasn't worth anyone's time. Gwen lifted her chin, didn't try to stop crying, and resumed walking. She had the pleasure of hearing her mother splutter as she was pushed back into motion. The pall-bearers clearly agreed that, no matter her choice of attire, it was Gwen's father's funeral, not Helen's husband's.

* * *

Peter stepped in, seating himself on the window ledge. "What's up, Gwen?"

She looked up, smiling a little. A week on, it was getting easier to smile, even if the painful thoughts between the smiles stayed largely unchanged. She had decided on what her way through would be, though: work. Lots and lots of work. Being as she'd dropped it entirely, there was certainly some to go back to.

"There are two things I want from you." Her eyes slid up and down him and a different smile touched her lips. "Alright, three things, but I'm gonna try to focus on the productive two."

"Productive?" he asked with a wry smile.

"Okay, bad word choice. Anyways, number one, can you describe everything you saw in that Oscorp facility?"

"Everything?"

She went over to her computer and loaded up the model she had going. "The police found no hidden lair where all this was made, so whatever it was, it was sealed off. To me, that means somebody is still operating it, so we need to know what sorts of things they have down there. Someday, someone is going to use those things again. Now, you said that there were some really strange things in there, but I, well I wasn't up for talking right then. So, let's sketch this out, so I can finish this model.

He walked over, looking at it what she had so far, which basically ended at the bottom of the elevator that, according to Peter, ended about six floors down from the publicly-known basement. He settled against the desk, so he could look both at the screen and at her. "Let's see, I guess I can do that. I mean, I came in through this shaft here, into a little open area, nothing there.

"On the right, first place I check, I'd call that the chemistry section. All sorts of massive cannisters and apparatuses to combine things. Basically any raw chemical combination could have been made there. I went back and went straight-I never took that initial left, but I never spotted a foundry or metal-working area, so that'd be my guess. Keeping on going, there was a huge room and two side-rooms.

"To the left, it looked like a bedroom and a gym sort of setup, like he lived down there, or at least stayed there sometimes. The door to the right was closed, so I went past it. It was heavy-duty, and I was still trying to sneak around, not get caught. Of course, turned out he kept the suit there, so that might have been my chance to catch him."

As he went, Gwen updated the model, taking notes of everything he said. She added the huge room. "This room, this was the one you said was creepy. Creepy how?"

"Creepy. Well, it was massive, and it had these things along the walls that looked like stand-up coffins. They each had packets of notes on the fronts. I didn't get a chance to read them, since I was looking around, and then he attacked. The creepy stuff, what I paid the most attention to, was in the middle."

"What sort of stuff?"

"Just... weird things. Some were simple, bits of robots and all that, but some was a lot stranger. One area looked like it was fit for a museum, ancient mesopotamia or something. There was one big vertical glass tube, filled with water-maybe not water, but a liquid-and there was half of the body of some weird mutated thing in it, all blue-skinned and not-quite-human. There looked to be other partial bodies further down. The room was massive."

Peter shrugged and shook his head. "Other than that, I'm not sure. He attacked, and I got tossed through a few of the displays. I got thrown at this machine that was levitating something, broke it entirely. There was this glowing thing in a super-heavy container, like for radiation control. The glow came out of a little slit-window on the front. Those are the only things I could specifically describe. I threw a camera, but it got stuck down there."

Gwen nodded, finishing her notes. "Well, it's not much, but something is always better than nothing."

He slid over on the desk, between her and the monitor. "You said something about a third thing."

She smiled, but pushed him back. "I said something about a second thing, too."

He slid back over, so she could get to the keyboard. She punched up the lizard file.

He glanced over it. "So, weird sightings?"

"It's real, I'm confident of it. Problem is, the only way to get evidence is go out there and do a stake-out."

"I'll go," he said, shrugging off any worry. "I'm not too worried about a lizard that knocks over drug stores."

"I'm going too."

"No," he said immediately.

"Sorry, not your call. I'm going to investigate, because if I stay here I'll go insane. So, if you want to be a supportive boyfriend, you'll start thinking about how to be a bodyguard, alright?"

"Gwen, this is a really bad idea."

Her eyes narrowed. "It's also not a debate. Do we understand each other?"

"Gwen, I will never understand you."

* * *

New York City made stake-outs awkward. In the rest of the country, it was fairly easy to park a car and watch something. New York was travelled on foot. It wasn't easy to just park in Manhattan for hours on end.

Peter made New York City stake-outs easy. The two of them were halfway up a skyscraper, her sitting on a little swing-like chair made of webbing and he just crouched with his feet on the wall and his butt on his heels like it was the most comfortable position in the world. They were high up, but she had a telephoto lense.

"Are you sure he'll hit this one?"

"I'm sure he'll hit it sometime. By the way, this is going to be a long week, Peter."

"I'm fine with that, but why can't we just catch this on the police scanner?"

"He always goes when they're closed, with nobody inside. He's only been spotted by random people on the street and by one vet that just happened to forget his wallet on his desk. Even if he were spotted, he's always in-and-out really quickly."

Peter nodded. "Alright, I'll give it to you, a stake-out is the only way to go."

"Exactly."

And it went alright. They didn't spot him, but they did make-out a bit and head home with enough time to catch a few hours before school. Then, it was back to class, home for a little more sleep, and back to work. A little research, a ride over to Peter's-she quite insisted that he not always come to her, even if it was more practical-and back to the stake-out.

Night two went like night one, and on night three they were extra-tired. It was also a bust.

Night four, thursday, they were whacked. She fell asleep in her little seat, leaning on him. She woke up when Peter moved and her head fell off his shoulder. She gave a little yelp, but he'd already caught her.

"And there he goes," he said.

"Get me down when you go down," she insisted.

He grabbed her and jumped. Her stomach leapt into her throat, and she shut her eyes, fighting off a scream. The angle changed, they slowed down, and then there was something solid under her butt. Gwen opened her eyes and found herself sitting on a bench beside the subway entrance. She stood, got her camera out, and started taking pictures of Peter running into the shop. He went hurtling back out. It made for a good photo, but Gwen still had to fight a quiver of fear.

He landed fine all the same. Out of the shop, beady eyes on Peter, stomped a beast that was surely somewhere between a lizard and a man, but larger than either. His scales were a rich green, with a lighter underbelly, and some sort of white pattern about his neck. Even hunched over with the way it walked, it had to tuck its shoulders to get through the doorway. Outside, it drew itself upright, and clearly had no trouble standing as a man, albeit a man twice Peter's height. She wondered exactly how it moved in the sewers; they weren't really all that spacious.

The lizard leapt, and Peter dodged and began fighting back. As ever, it was difficult for Gwen to follow the fighting. She could see specific things, some of them awe-inspiring, such as when Peter ducked under a swinging claw, caught the thing's forearm, and trailed along behind the swinging arm to kick it in the face with all of its own strength, then proceeded to plant that foot, leap off it's head, dash down its back, catch its lashing tail, and throw it like the hammer toss. He even yelled "New olympic record!" when the Lizard hit the side of a building.

Peter was impressive in a sleek, agile, cool, totally sexy kind of way. The Lizard had power. Raw, terrifying power. It threw a car at Peter. It ignored a kick to the face, not even flinching, and responded by punching Peter hard enough to crack the pavement when he landed.

Gwen kept taking pictures, trying to think of anything she could do. Of course there was nothing. She wasn't a superhero, she was just a photographer. All the same, it was clear Peter was losing. He was getting slower with each passing moment. He was struggling to dodge swings.

Gwen swapped her film for the second time, which told her this had been a very, very long fight. She raised her camera once more, and wondered if she was going to photograph the death of a second man that she loved in the span of a single month.

She knew she should do something, but all she could think of was to just keep taking pictures. In some ways, it went back to the only way forward she could see: just keep working. If she put the camera down, if she looked at what was happening through her own eyes, as a part of the world, rather than through a lens, as a composition, she would just break into pieces. It was like that lens was a wall of glass holding back an ocean that would otherwise drown her. As the camera clicked away, Gwen felt a coldness settle into her, a stillness. This was easy, right here.

The Lizard reared up, towering over Peter, where he was backed against a wall. She'd seen him like this before, in other places. The wall wasn't a barrier, it was an avenue, a way out. He wasn't confined, and he would dodge. She lined up the shot, ready to take the picture, and then he didn't dodge.

The Lizard's clawed hand swept down, and Peter's hand came up to meet it. A shadow shifted across Peter's form, until he was wrapped in darkness. Their hands interlocked, and the Lizard's brutal strength was stopped. The tableau held. Peter stood, clad in shining blackness, holding the beast at bay.

The lizard roared and lunged down again, with his other clawed hand, and Peter caught that as well. He didn't go to his knees, he didn't even waver. Then he began to twist his hands inwards, bending the Lizard's hands back on themselves. The Beast let out a pained, wailing rasp of noise and began to struggle. It thrashed, ripped one hand free, and another.

Loose, the Lizard hopped backwards, landing on all fours, hissing at Peter. Peter advanced, and the Lizard fled. It scooped off a manhole cover and flung it into a nearby building. Despite its size, the beast flowed into the tight sewer entrance with ease.

Peter ran to the entrance as well, jumping down, but moments later came back out. He looked Gwen's way, but she shook her head. "Witnesses," she mouthed. He took off, webbing his way back towards her apartment, still clad in that strange black suit.

The subway ride back was terrifying. All she could think of was that thing he had been wearing, how it had come over him as though by magic. It was impossible, but she had seen it with her own eyes. She kept looking at her camera, wishing she could see the film. One of those few cases where she needed digital and didn't have it.

She finally got to her stop and ran all the way to her building. The elevator ride let her catch her breath, and she was almost steady by the time she opened the door. He was there, in that black, shining outfit, looking at her.

"Did you see that?" he asked, his tone bright.

"Peter-"

"I tossed that guy around like nothing. I've never felt this strong before."

"Peter-"

"I think I'm getting stronger. Faster, too. It's-"

"Peter!"

He finally stopped. "What?"

"What happened to you out there?"

"As I was saying-"

"No," Gwen interrupted, "the new suit. Where did it come from?"

He glanced down at himself. "What new- Why is my suit black?"

"Look in a mirror!"

He opened the bathroom door and jumped back when he saw his reflection. "What the-"

Suddenly, it changed. The black retracted, and he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, just like normal. "Gwen, what's happening?"

"I don't know."

"Gwen, I-" Turning, he saw her, and froze. She was backed up against the door, shaking. "Don't be scared, Gwen. I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt you."

She swallowed back her fear, forcing it down to put on a good face for him. He was the one wrapped in some strange outfit, after all. "I know that, Peter. I know. It's not you that frightened me, it's that... whatever did that."

He looked at his hands. "I feel so normal. I don't understand this at all."

"Whatever it is, it made you stronger, far stronger."

"It did?"

She walked up to him, got close to him. He had to know she wasn't scared, even if it was a lie because the thought of that thing still frightened her a little. "Peter, when I develop the film, you'll see. It spread over you, like a wave of blackness, right before you caught his hands. It was plain as day, from where I was standing, that it was what made you stronger."

"That's... unnerving."

She paused a moment, a realization striking her. "Come here."

He followed her into her room. She lay her bag by the computer and began digging through drawers.

"What's up?"

"Give me your hand," she said.

He did, and she grabbed his elbow, reached up with scissors, and clipped the end of his sleeve off.

He leapt back, yelling, "What are you-"

He stopped when he saw what happened. The split piece of cloth turned into a black, inky fluid, and raced across the floor to slip into his shoe. His sleeve was uncut.

"How did you know to try that?" he asked.

"Because you weren't wearing a T-shirt and jeans, you were wearing your regular outfit. Which is gone, while this one remains. It might look like clothes, but it's not."

Peter stared at his outfit, started pulling it off, but when he dropped the T-shirt it flickered to blackness and rejoined his outfit, reforming over his chest. His breathing was coming fast, panicky, as he looked down at himself.

"Peter, just sit down."

"But-"

"Peter. Come here."

He did so, and she sat down beside him on the bed. "It'll be fine. You're smart enough to think this out."

He nodded. "We're smart enough. Let's talk this through."

"What do we know about it?"

Peter nodded, his breathing settling. Science. This was familiar ground. "Black is probably its natural color, but it can change color. It can assume various shapes. It is a single mass that readheres to itself."

Gwen got up, grabbing her largest whiteboard, wiping away the pulse-measurements she'd last used it for, and taking notes. "Good, great. What else?"

He paused a moment. "It displays some advanced algorithms or intellect, impossible to tell right now."

Gwen wrote that, then stopped. "No, displays some connection to you, mentally."

"How so?"

"If it just made an outfit based on what outfits were appropriate, it would make a standard one, but it put you in your own clothes."

"This is a green shirt with blue jeans."

She pointed at his waist. "And that's a grease stain, from that Kwikkee Burger date, when you jumped up to rush out and deal with the Ringer."

He frowned. "This is my exact shirt."

"No algorithm or intellect could know that except your own."

"So, it has a mental interface of some sort. It's being controlled by my subconscious. I needed to be stronger, and it made me stronger. I didn't want to be in that black outfit and I wasn't."

They were silent for a moment. Gwen expanded on what she'd written, clarifying the notes. It was just random ideas, but that was where things usually started. Observations, thoughts, eventually hypotheses and experiments. Maybe, sometime, results.

"I want to see something," Peter said. "Hand me those scissors."

She did so, and he tried to cut a chunk off his sleeve. He cut through, but it just mended in place, unhurt. The next time he tried, it pulled away and wasn't even cut.

Gwen re-wrote the 'advanced algorithms/intellect' she had previously erased.

"Yeah," Peter agreed, "signs of self-defense. I want to see that black stuff again."

"That I can help with," Gwen assured him.

"You can?"

"It'll take a bit, but yes." She lifted her camera and grinned. "Trust me, I've got some shots you'll want to see."

She went into the dark room she'd made her closet into and got to the slow, smelly process of developing a few hundred pictures. She was experienced enough to be quick, and had the room set up to do quite a few at a time, but it was a process limited by the chemical reaction. Still, she could start the right roll of film first, give it a little bit of a rush.

When she got out, Peter was sitting at her computer, skimming through articles about nanotechnology.

"Let's see," he said, holding out a hand

"These are just negatives. Be patient." She slid them into the film scanner and soon had them popping up on the screen. Fifteen shots in rapid succession showed Peter's red-and-blue outfit undergoing an eerie change. Darkness spread from the small of his back, racing across his body, down his legs and up his arms. It didn't look quite how she recalled, but that was the beauty of film: it told the truth. In the moment, adrenaline fighting with shock, she'd not seen things exactly as they were, but the lens had been as honest as ever.

Peter looked over the images a dozen times, then started zooming in. "Damn, it's all pixelated."

"Yeah, that's because the scanner can't exceed that resolution. If you want more, I'll need to make a print, which'll take another chunk of time."

He thought a moment, slowly getting a grin. "There are a lot of other things I'd like to do with a chunk of time. But, I do want to see it."

"Where, exactly, do you want to see?"

He looked at her, eyed her up and down. She rolled her eyes and he went back to the computer, zooming out to show her the spot he was interested in. She went back to work in the dark room. When she finished, he was lying on the ceiling, staring at her bed. "Peter, are you okay?"

"Fine. Just... nevermind." He jumped down, reaching for the developed picture.

She put the photo behind her back. "Oh no, this I want to hear."

"Gwen, come on," he said, trying to wheedle his way free.

"You want the photo? You give up the goods."

"Alright. But don't laugh. I was, I was imagining what you looked like, sleeping down there when I'm not with you."

"Oh!" She pulled him into a hug. "That's so sweet! Also, kinda stalkerish, but for some reason I don't mind."

He kissed her, then moved away just a touch, so they could really look at each other. "You want to, maybe, see about the photo later?"

She smiled, dropped the photo, and jumped on him.

* * *

She sat against the headboard, looking down at her toes. "Peter, there's something that's bothering me."

"Not something I did?"

"No, of course not," Gwen said, wondering how he could imagine she had minded anything he had done. "But, earlier, when I jumped you."

"Yeah?"

"How did you take your clothes off?"

"Well, I-" he paused, realizing what she meant. "I think I pulled them off, but they're not here, are they. I'm still wearing my-" from his left sock, blackness climbed up him, until he was clothed again "-sock."

Gwen jumped out of bed and began putting her clothes back on as swiftly as possible. "I'm sorry, we cannot do that until we've figured this out. Absolutely cannot."

When she turned, she found Peter on the opposite wall, up near the ceiling. He lowered himself to the ground, staring down at the thing that pretended it was clothing. "Trust me, I am entirely on that page."

Gwen finished getting dressed, then looked to where the photo lay on the floor. "Well, let's see what has you so interested."

He pinned the picture to the wall and stepped back. "Tell me you don't see it."

She narrowed her eyes, then stepped closer. "Is that, skin between the red and the black?"

"It's this black suit destroying my suit as it replaces it. It's rolling across my skin, removing one thing and adding another. But look at the patterns."

She stepped back, trying to find what he was talking about. "Alright, that I do not see."

"The blackness is advancing at an incredible rate, so it looks like constant motion of a line, but it's not just an even line. Look at the ridges, the protrusions."

"Yeah, it's not just a line, so?"

"It's an irregular fractal, which to me says a lot."

"A fractal?" She narrowed her eyes, looking at the pattern again. "Alright, I see that. But what does it tell you?"

"If it were mechanical, it would be more consistent. It's somewhat erratic, but still something of a fractal, the way that branching works in nature. Imagine it's a tree, growing across me."

"It's a plant?"

"It's a thing that grows like a plant. It's a lifeform of some sort."

Gwen walked over to the whiteboard and erased algorithms. "So, where does that leave us?"

"It leaves us with a fairly good idea of where to look."

Gwen was even more lost.

Peter grinned. "Man, this feels good. I can see why you like figuring this stuff out and lording it over me."

She rolled her eyes. "Savor it much longer and the dryspell might outlast solving this."

He broke quick. "In the Goblin's lair, several things got smashed. One of them was what looked like a black cube inside of a field of some sort, like something being electromagnetically levitated. That machine got smashed, the cube gone."

She took a slow, deep breath. "He has a room full of strange lifeforms, something gets broken near you, you have a strange lifeform on your skin. Alright, now we know. So, we have to go find out what he knew."

"If we can," Peter said. "The cops couldn't find the access shaft I went through, which means the place is sealed tight."

"Sealed," she said, "not nonexistent. We dig, we'll find it. We just need to go shopping for some shovels."

Peter smiled. "So, another all-nighter, then?"

Gwen gestured at the window, where the first hints of dawn were softening the darkness. "It's already an all-nighter. Let's just try not to make it two."

"Webswinging it is, then."

The suit reappeared, and she took an involuntary step back. Immediately, it turned to blue and red.

"You know, it's not the color that bothers me."

"I know." The suit went back to unrelieved black, perhaps preferring to keep its true color. She shivered at the thought of its sentience. Peter held out an arm for her. "You sure you're okay with this?"

"You wouldn't hurt me."

He nodded, and they began swinging north. They went through Manhattan instead of Queens because, despite the slightly longer route, it made for faster travel due to the buildings. A lot might have changed, had they taken a different route, but they didn't. As such, they were swinging through one of the many canyons between buildings, staying high so she wouldn't get recognized, a risk even with her hood up, when commotion broke out below.

Peter landed on the side of a skyscraper, looking down. A car flipped across the street, slamming into a concrete barricade, and a familiar form burst into sight. The Lizard. Around it, people fled, except for one. A security guard, gun in hand, and he started firing.

"I have to," Peter said, leaping down. Gwen clenched her eyes shut, trying not to scream as the ground raced up. Then she slowed, stopped, the ground beneath her feet. She opened her eyes to see Peter kick the Lizard square in the jaw. The Lizard's head rocked back from the blow, and it stumbled away. The security guard was on the ground, unhurt.

Gwen missed that picture, but she dug out her camera and kept going anyways. Maybe this would go into the papers, and maybe this would just be something they kept for later, a glimpse of Peter fighting while aided by this strange organism. She wanted to have the pictures all the same.

Although stunned, the Lizard certainly was not stopped. It came back with a vengeance, seeming faster and stronger than ever. Peter was fighting fairly hard to keep clear of its claws, but it was still clearly a one-sided fight. Peter landed punches and kicks, he tossed the Lizard into a car, and he not once had a touch landed on him.

Then the Lizard changed tactics, and Gwen knew she had the photo that would be on the front page. Peter leaping high, clear of a rolled car, while the Lizard lunged away from his diversion, towards a woman who screamed as she saw death approaching. She had them all in frame, she could feel it. The moment, captured, and with it then entirety of the battle.

Pictures or no, the fight moved on. The Lizard didn't try to kill the woman though, he just grabbed her, a single claw about her waist, and lifted her before him. Gwen twisted the camera, wondering if she had been wrong about the photo of the day. Spider-Man, standing upright, frozen for fear of worsening the situation. The Lizard towering over him, the woman held high in a clear threat. The woman screaming herself raw as fear overtook her. And an ounce of humanity on the Lizard's face: a cruel grin, as if it knew exactly what it was doing. Not kindly humanity, but not all humanity was kind.

"You know, this is why we nueter our pets," Peter said.

The Lizard tilted its head in an odd expression of uncertainty. Peter was right, the banter did throw them off.

"Too much testosterone makes them think they're a whole lot tougher than they are. Don't worry, I'll disabuse you of the notion."

Peter lunged, faster than Gwen had ever seen a man move. The lizard squeezed, but Peter's hands were already on its claws. His muscles rippled, and the claws bent the wrong way. The Lizard let out a roar that made tigers seem mild. Peter lunged in, but the Lizard spun, a quick, tight circle, and slammed him with its tail. He hurtled through the glass doors of a storefront.

The woman started to scramble away, and the other onlookers likewise fled. Nobody was going to stay after that, nobody except Gwen.

Peter rushed in again, swift and sure once more. The Lizard attacked, roaring still, not slowed by his mangled claw. But the beast was overmatched. Peter struck with brutal power, bludgeoning the beast down.

As Peter fought, he yelled. "You shouldn't have done that! You shouldn't have attacked that woman!"

That frame chilled her, and Gwen finally lowered her camera, let it fall about her neck, let herself see the moment as it happened, not as a part of some story she would tell later. Her eyes widened as she took it in.

"What are you doing?" she yelled.

The Lizard was on his knees, staring up at Peter. Peter spun into a powerful kick, tossing the Lizard into the street where it crunched into the hood of a car. Peter leapt onto the car, stood over the Lizard, and began punching it. "You shouldn't have done that!"

Gwen ran at him. "Peter, stop it."

His fist came up spraying red droplets of blood, then fell in another savage blow, another.

"Peter! Please!" she screamed. She grabbed at his arm and he twisted, tossing her off. Gwen hit the pavement, rolled over, and stopped against a car.

Peter was staring down at her. His fist, held high, dripped blood. "I- I- I didn't mean to. I'd never hurt you."

He stepped down from the car. "Gwen, I wouldn't hurt you. I don't, I didn't."

She looked past him, to where the Lizard was lying amidst twisted metal and broken glass. "You killed him."

Peter looked at the Lizard. "But I, he hurt that woman, and I had to stop him."

"You didn't have to kill him. He didn't need to die."

Just then, the Lizard's chest rose, fell again. Gwen jumped up, ducking under Peter's arm, rushing to the beast's side. At last, so close, she realized what she hadn't seen before. The white loop about its neck wasn't some sort of marking, it was the remnant of a shirt. The thing had been wearing a shirt. There wasn't a doubt left in her mind, the Lizard had been a man. Every other part of its clothing had burst, but its head and neck hadn't grown quite so far as the rest of it, and that bit of cloth had remained, a testament to what came before.

And that man, whatever he may have become, was broken. There was blood everywhere, but nowhere did it spurt out as she had feared. Perhaps Peter wouldn't be a murderer. At least, maybe if she tried, she could prevent him from becoming a murderer. She started running her hands across the cold, scaly body, trying to feel where the blood was coming from. She had her medical kit in the bottom of her camera bag, ready to go. It might even be enough to cut through his hide.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked, his voice rough.

Gwen didn't stop working as she replied. "You almost killed him."

"He was going to kill-"

"He didn't!" Gwen snapped. "You stopped him. That's what you do, you stop killers. You're not Frank Castle. You remember the story we wrote about him?"

"Castle? I, yes, of course. I stopped him from killing that man."

Gwen hissed in a breath as she finally realized the obvious injury, the one she'd been ignoring because she saw so much blood. The Lizard's chest moved unevenly. One side would rise, and a portion on the other would fall, then the reverse. She looked to his neck and saw his trachea shifting to the left, visibily diverted by the pressure on his lungs. Two things at once, both horrible.

Flail chest, where a section of ribs was completely disconnected, so that it didn't move right, ruining his breathing and damaging his lungs. No surprise that this coincided with a collapsed lung, with one half of the plural sack collecting air or fluid outside of the lungs, slowly filling and pushing both of the lungs aside. Hopefully it was collecting air, because otherwise she'd have to try fashioning a drainage tube, which she had no idea how to do.

She dug into her bag and pulled out a broad, hollow needle, carefully felt at the Lizard's chest, and drove it into the gap between two ribs. Immediately, the Lizard gasped in air. Even unconscious, the difference in his visible comfort was obvious. The flail chest would still kill him, though.

"Why are you only paying attention to him?" Peter snapped.

"Because he's dying," she replied. She needed to reconnect those ribs, somehow, so they didn't move separately, or the lungs would just collapse again. She looked around, snatched up a piece of metal that had once been under the hood of the car, and tried to think of a way to attach it. She hadn't read much on how to treat a flail chest, not yet. She was just making a guess as to what to do.

Before she could act, Peter spun her around. "Gwen, he's going to be fine."

"He's dying," she replied, aghast at his nonchalance.

Peter was already webbing the Lizard down. "You don't understand. You can't. But I do. This creature, the one we're worried about, I think I understand it."

"You're scaring me."

"Trust me, just trust me. I'd never hurt you, you know that."

Gwen stayed silent.

"See, this man, and he was a man before, he's become like a lizard in a lot of ways. He can regenerate lost body parts, heal most any injury. Already, I can see where his skin is knitting together. From here, I can see it. No need for a microscope."

"What are you talking about?"

He looked around at the empty streets. "Sirens. Yes, you can't hear them yet."

He scooped her up and leapt skyward, and soon they were swinging back south, Peter still talking, sounding strangely excited. "I understand so much, now. This creature, it was getting some of my thoughts, but I can see its too. I can see what was happening, before. They were experimenting on it, experimenting on people with it."

He launched them higher, an arc far above the rooftops, and for a time he ran with her, leaping rather than swinging. "The people all died, of course. The process of bonding, that was too much, they couldn't survive. Me, though, I was fine. I had the strength to survive that, and now we are bonded. You see, it needed somebody strong. This relation is symbiotic. I give it the chance to move freely, it gives me the strength to do what I can."

"Please stop, Peter," Gwen murmured, knowing he wouldn't.

"Not yet, not quite yet. Here, here we are." He dove, shot a web, and went sailing through the air. They flipped free and landed atop the towers of Brooklyn Bridge. "Look around you, Gwen. This is our city, this is our home. I couldn't protect it before. I wasn't fast enough, strong enough. I didn't have enough time."

His chin was high, a proud angle, as he spoke. "With the aid of this symbiote, I have more than enough. Not just strength, though. I haven't slept, but I'm not tired. I won't be, ever again. It's improving me, and not only physically. All of my senses, not just the eyesight to see that man healing. Even my mind. I can think so much faster, as it improves the connections in my neural pathways."

Gwen stared at him. "Peter, it's changing you."

"It's improving me!"

She shook her head, slowly.

"Gwen, like this, I can do anything. Anything!"

She backed away. The chill morning wind seemed to freeze the tears on her cheeks. "That thing, it got into your head. It changed you."

"No, no," he said, the words desperate. As he approached her, the black suit pulled back, showing her Peter's strained expression. "I'm still me."

He reach for her, and she slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch me," she said.

He stared at her. "Stop doing this."

"You are becoming a monster!"

"Stop saying these things." He reached a hand up, gripping his head. "Stop it, stop it, stop it."

She stepped back, held her chin high. "If you do this, you're the villain."

"I am not the villain!" he screamed he bellowed, lashing out at her in blind anger as the blackness descended across his face once more.

Gwen felt his arm strike her, and her feet left the ground. She'd never imagined how hard he hit, how much it would hurt. As she hurtled away, time slowed. She could see the suit writhing before her eyes, and she wondered if this was what her life had been for. Everything for that one moment, the moment where she put a hero back onto the right path, because surely she had done that. She could see him fighting, see the symbiote moving separately now. As she fell, she saw a hand clawing to get free from the blackness of the symbiote's chest, Peter fighting his way to the surface.

But no. Gwen didn't buy that. She didn't believe in fate, and even if she did, she didn't believe she was just some prop for a hero, a stepping stone in his journey. No, she believed in other things. For example, she believed that she was going to tell stories that the world would never forget.

Her hands moved with the fluidity of mastery, long practice honing perfect motion into instinctive ease. The camera came up before her eyes, and she started clicking away away. Above her, in that frame, a young man tore his way from a black beast. He could only barely fight free, a single limb, the line of his jaw, a portion of his chest. It was a heroic arm, though. The hands squeezing down on the web-shooter that still remained, launching a thread of webbing towards her.

She caught that on film as well, the impossible arc of that desperate effort to save her. It would make quite a story, whether she lived to tell it or not.

She felt a sudden impact. The world disappeared.

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _For anyone that was wondering, I was inspired to write this after watching both "Veronica Mars" and "Arrow" in the same day. I always found Felicity Smoke more inspiring than the other characters, feeling like she actually did far more work than any of them. I'd been watching Veronica Mars earlier, and thought that the snarky Veronica seemed a natural match for the Gwen Stacy of the Ultimate Universe, if slightly amped up._

 _So, this is an alternate-universe fan-fic with Gwen Stacy written somewhat in the style of Veronica Mars, and the primary heroes, villains, and events being fairly similar to those in universe 1610 (ultimates), and to a lesser degree universe 616 (primary)._

 _It's my first fan-fic written or posted, and I hope that you enjoyed it._


	5. Extras

The air was a pleasant, winter chill, the sort that some describe as bracing rather than cold. Gwen's eyes hurt, and when she tried to open them she had to blink several times to break the gunk off. All she could see was a bland grey expanse. Along with an uninteresting view, opening her eyes brought pain. The pain welled up from her extremities, a slow building agony that soon flooded her senses. She would have cried out, but a wheezing gasp was all she could manage right then.

It was the pain that brought her memory back in line. Those last few seconds, plummeting from the bridge, striking the water. Not dying, apparently, but not exactly saved, either. As she sat there, the pain faded, or perhaps just became less shocking. Either way, it wasn't overwhelming as it had been.

She turned her neck, and found that it hurt a little less than her arm did. The view turned from a bland grey meeting a bland white to a view of a snowy shore. As if prompted by her awareness of the weather, the bracing chill turned painfully cold. She looked down and found a layer of undisturbed snow across her legs, rising up towards her chest.

She hadn't died from the fall, but she knew that if she didn't move soon, she would die all the same. Ignoring the pain, she started shifting her arms. The left one was agony, but the right barely hurt. She rolled aside, getting onto hands and knees, then used her hands to climb up the rock she had been leaning against. Standing upright revealed that her legs hurt almost as badly as her arms did, but they still functioned.

It was so cold that, even seconds after feeling fine, she was starting to shake. She had to move, had to get somewhere safe.

Hands almost immediately numbing to pins and needles when they touched the icy stones, Gwen ignored her pain and dragged herself over the rocks, away from the icy water. Soon, she was under snow-laden trees, staring around. A quick look revealed that, initially, her eyes hadn't adjusted, and she'd barely been able to see. Now that her vision was returning, she realized she was looking at the Brooklyn Skyline. When she turned left, looking past the stony shore, she saw Staten Island.

Gwen knew the city quite well. She'd lived there all her life, and she loved learning the little details of a place's past, so she knew immediately where she was: Hoffman Island. She also knew that Hoffman Island was empty.

"Don't give up hope," she tried to say, but her numb lips spoiled the effort. It was so very, very cold.

Still, she kept to the sentiment. There had to be hope. Boats, those were the hope, she realized. She turned her eyes from the skyline and began scanning the bay. Fortunately, New York was busy, no matter how cold it got, and she soon spotted a yacht drifting by. She began waving and yelling, although the waves were feeble and her voice surely inaudible.

The yacht did not divert, so she went back to looking. Soon, she spotted a freighter, but didn't even try to get its attention. Nobody on that would be able to see her from there. Next, a tug boat motored past the island, headed out. Again, she yelled, she waved, she tried to make herself seen.

The cold was wearing, and she fell to her knees, finding herself too weak to try much longer. She had struggled long enough, though. The tug slowed, began moving her way. It wasn't fast, but its intent was clear.

Realizing that she might be safe, the adrenaline began to fade, and the pain returned, even through the icy chill. She was barely conscious when a big man dragged her off the shore, bundling her in blankets and telling her to pay attention, to stay awake.

"Say something," he insisted. "It'll help you keep awake."

"It's winter," she said at last, only finally realizing that it hadn't been winter when she fell off the bridge, and it really shouldn't have been winter yet. "Why is it winter?"

* * *

The street was cold, but Gwen endured it. She'd had to sell a tough lie to convince the paramedics she was fine, but she was good at lying, especially when fame was on the line. If there was one thing Gwen did not want, it was to be hailed as a miracle-survivor, especially in an age where miracle-survivor meant super-powers-to-be-watched-and-studied. There was a reason that Peter kept his identity secret.

She knew she was assumed dead, though. By some freak accident, Gwen had survived the three months from September to December. She didn't know how, and she was a little worried about finding out. She was glad not to be dead, that was certain, but at the same time the knowledge that she should have died and hadn't was more than just troubling.

Her first hope was that Peter knew something. He had been there, after all. Hopefully, he was home, because Gwen did not want to go to school and search there, and if he was swinging around the skyscrapers it would be impossible to find him.

Fortunately, not quite everything she owned had been washed away with the tides. Her camera and her bag were gone, but most of her clothes remained. Along with the clothes was the little reserve she kept in a hidden pocket on the coat, just in case she lost her bag. Eighty bucks and a fake ID that said she was twenty-two.

She bought a ticket, took the subway up to Queens, and walked to Peter's house. From across the street, she eyed the door nervously, knowing that his Aunt May would freak. She walked around, through a neighbor's yard, and eyed the window. Peter stepped into the light, smiling and laughing. Gwen smiled, raising a hand and opening her mouth to get his attention.

Before any words left her mouth, a woman stepped up in front of Peter, laughing as well. He poked at her, tauntingly, and she started tickling him in reply, laughing away as he scrambled away from her. They fell onto the bed, out of Gwen's sight.

Gwen found her eyes watery, and when she turned to walk away it was difficult to breath. He was with someone else. Why not? She was three-months dead. That was longer than they'd been going out, why wouldn't he move on and find someone better?

The sarcastic thoughts stung all the more because she wasn't even sure they were wrong. He had moved on, and it hurt, but she wasn't even angry, not precisely.

Down on the subway, she thought of the woman again. She'd been familiar, but— that was it. Mary Jane Watson. Those modelling agencies wouldn't turn her away much longer. Gwen closed her eyes, tried to recall the case. Actually, MJ had a while left, most of a year, since she was young for her high-school class.

Not wanting to think about Peter or his new girlfriend, Gwen turned her thoughts inward, but all she found was a blur. She'd aged three months, and nothing to show for it.

Less than nothing, really. All her friends would have moved on, being as she was dead. The subway was endless, and comforting in that. She could just ride a line, round and round, not worrying about stopping. Stewing in her misery, her father would have said, except that he was dead too.

Gwen stood up and got off the subway, even though it wasn't the right stop. She couldn't sit there forever, she had to get living. Three months wasn't that much time to make up, she told herself.

The stop wasn't in the right place, but it was in Manhattan, which was what mattered. Up she went, until she found somewhere to pay for computer time. Cyber cafes were mostly a thing of the past, but there were occasional kiosks, still. That took most of her money, but that was fine.

A quick log-on demonstrated that, even cleaning up with a death certificate, people missed things. Specifically, they missed accounts that were setup specifically to be missed, like the one Gwen put her money from the photography into so her father would never know. Fortunately, she'd bought the medical kit and thus not been able to blow it all on a fancy computer, so she still had several grand on hand.

Time to go to the bank—in Manhattan, hence the location—and get herself back on her feet.

She didn't get up, though. She sat there, staring at a blank browser window. In the search bar, she'd typed, 'Gwendolyn Stacy'. Gwen hated being on the wrong end of a lens. Before she... whatever strangely-not-dying-and-losing-three-months is called, Gwen had only had two incidents that pinged on Google for her name: A byline on one article in the Bugle, and a few blurry camera-phone photos of her yelling at her mother during her father's funeral.

There would be more. Her fingers hovered over the enter key, and she dropped them back to her lap. She had to know, even if she didn't want to. Gathering her nerve, she tapped the key and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the articles were waiting for her.

Her jaw dropped. Page one of the results was all about her final story, the one she'd never written. The image results were the photo she knew she'd taken, but had never seen. Peter, clawing his way from the black suit, trying to save her. Failing.

There was another story that was showing all the photos as hers, rather than Peters. It was strange. She'd never cared about the credit, but it felt good to have it. She had earned it, after all.

And that was mostly it: her photos. There were a few pictures of her, but they were all from that same blurry camera-phone footage. Nothing proper for an obit, even. It was nice, to think they were all noting her work, not her face. She logged off, grinning, thinking about the truth of it. Six weeks of work, and she had three front-page photos.

Nobody else could say that, not at seventeen.

Even better, there was little of substance about Gwen herself. Famous people were hard to alter, but everyday people like high-school students were just numbers in databases, so far as the world was concerned, and Gwen wasn't slightly worried about changing those numbers around.

* * *

Day two was a marathon of setting things right for her reappearance. She had so many records to edit, some online and even more in person, that she didn't have time for any smaller matters. Day three would be for actually starting back up, she promised herself as she went to sleep.

Come morning, Gwen meandered out of her hotel room, trying to decide if she wanted to rent it for longer or if going public would involve finding somewhere to stay. Probably finding a place. She closed out her bill and headed to a cafe down the street.

It was an oddly nice day, although still quite cold, and she decided to have her coffee outside as she walked, rather than huddling at a table and googling herself again. It made her oddly giddy to see that article on her cover photos, proclaiming her one of the most promising photographers in generations. The article said she was 'cut short', but other than that she felt it was spot on.

She glanced down at her new bag, heavy with a camera once more. Half of her savings had went to that. Responsible spending or not, she knew she wouldn't regret it. She was a photographer, after all, and that meant she had to be ready.

Gwen stopped in front of the descent into the subway, sipping at her coffee. She had to go down there, get on the train, and head to the courthouse. Legal documentation was needed to reverse a death. She had everything she needed so that the story of her survival would be the story she wanted it to be, she just wasn't sure about moving forward.

Before she could make up her mind, a panicked scream and an accompanying bout of yelling drew her gaze. Without thought, the camera jumped to her hands and she was searching for a shot. There it was, a man over the street, swinging her way. She aimed, got him in frame, and got a great shot of a red-suited Spider-Man, without the blue and white accents she remembered. Not chasing anyone, though, just swinging by.

Why the panic?

Around her people ducked their heads. Gwen smiled up at Peter, wondering if he would see her, if she wouldn't get the coming-out she wanted.

Mid-swing, his head turned. His next web didn't shoot out, and he almost slammed into the side of a building, landing awkwardly on all fours, looking right at her. She looked around, then nodded towards a bakery. He jumped out of sight.

She went inside and sat down, and a minute later Peter walked in. Jeans, T-shirt with a snarky comment, and a winter coat that mostly hid that snark: same bland clothing choices he'd always had.

"You're alive," he said, voice low.

She nodded. "So I am. I just, well, it's complicated, I'll tell you it all, once we're somewhere private."

He sat down. "Yeah. Private. God, Gwen."

He leaned across the table and kissed her, hard. She jerked in surprise, but his hand was behind her head, holding her there. After a moment, he sat back, grinning.

Her stomach fluttered, but her mind was flashing back to him tossing Mary-Jane onto the bed. Not that she wanted to talk about another girl right then, but she was bothered all the same. "What was that?"

His grin turned stiff, his eyes drawing together. "That, I mean, it was a kiss. For you."

"What's going on, Peter?"

"Nothing's going on," he said. "I mean, yes, things are going on. It's complicated. It's impossible, here, in public."

"You want to talk somewhere private?" she said.

"Yes," he said, voice sharp. He stood immediately, grabbing her hand and dragging her up as well.

She pulled back, although she still slid a bit when he started dragging her. "Peter, we should buy something. We did sit down inside, you know."

"Oh, sure. Uh, I'll grab some fritters for the road. You like fritters, right?"

Gwen nodded. "Fritters are good."

He bought fritters, then rushed into the street and down the way. She had to run to keep up, feeling incredibly obvious when they ducked into an alley. At least he was thinking enough to carry her straight up, and then stay high as he leapt and swung north. They went into the Bronx, rather than Queens, which was a surprise, and soon they arrived at an old brick building. It looked familiar, and then she realized it had been one of the factories she'd first looked into when tracking the Vulture.

At the time, it had been defunct. Peter went in through a window, then lifted a massive steel door on the floor and headed into a basement. The door clanged shut behind, hard. A glance back showed a snapped steel bar where the counterweight would have been, and Gwen realized that nobody but Peter opening that door.

He pulled a lever and light filled the space. It had gone to chemistry, not robotics, under Peter's hand.

"Why the new place?" she asked.

"Oh, it's just easier to keep everything separate. No chance of Aunt May finding the web fluid, you know?" He grinned, grabbing one of the little canisters the fluid was stored in. "Check this out, I've been working on it a ton."

She put her mind in the moment, on Peter, who was trying to regale her with the wonders he'd accomplished. It wasn't unimpressive. He had the web fluid process down to five-percent waste. He had a higher-pressure canister, increasing the fluid capacity of each cartridge by half. His suit was now fire-resistant and insulated against electrocution. He had been making progress, inventing new tools to push the fight against crime.

It was all extremely impressive, but she knew Peter, and she knew how he lied. All those tricks, they were his little diversions, his ways to keep her from talking about what she wanted to talk about. Words to keep her from asking about MJ.

That didn't seem like all there was to it, though. In fact, that didn't seem like it at all. She tried to steer the conversation to anything other than his exploits as Spider-Man and he drove it right back. He was dodging her, and she just knew it was more than MJ.

"Peter, we need to talk," she finally said, cutting him off mid-sentence.

He put his hands on her waist and spun her about, lifting her away from the table and over to the wall. "Come on, Gwen, let's celebrate your return. We can talk later."

He kissed her, hard, and her efforts to push him away were futile. He barely seemed to notice the push, easily overpowering her. This time, there was no heat inside her, just a fluttering panic.

He finally came up for air and she squirmed away. "Peter, what are you doing?"

"What am I doing? I'm kissing my long-lost girlfriend. I'm celebrating."

"What about Mary-Jane?"

"What about her?" He shook his head and stepped forward. His every motion was so fast, she couldn't even react as he snaked an arm behind her back and pulled her close. "Come on, stop talking about other girls. I don't want to talk about Mary-Jane, I want to talk about you."

There was an odd gleam in his eyes, and fear settled deep into Gwen's stomach. She was trapped down there with a man who wasn't the man she remembered. He started kissing her neck, and she let him, because the thought of making him angry was terrifying. She flashed back to the bridge, to the impact as he slugged her the once. It was months later, and her shoulder still hurt where he had punched her, the pain sliding down into her arm as Peter kissed her neck.

It all made sense, if that thing were still in him, still twisting his mind. Except that it couldn't be. She would notice that, she would know. But she couldn't imagine what other reason there could be, though, for Peter to be so pushy. He pressed her against one of the tables, moving her about like she was a toy doll, and she realized there was nothing she could do. Nothing.

She didn't believe in nothing, though. Gwen believed in finding solutions to insoluble problems. So, he was the super-powered Peter Parker, so maybe he was still wearing some weird super-suit that messed with his head, so what. Gwen was the takes-frontpage-photos-of-supervillains Gwen Stacy. Right then, Gwen was quite sure she had to get out, and that meant working with what she had, and a quick inventory told her that she had plenty.

She kissed him back, but still pushed away a bit. After a little more necking, he backed off a touch. "Gwen-"

"Right now, Peter?"

"Yes, right now," he said, as though it couldn't be more obvious.

"Peter, I just got back. I have tons to do. I have to prove to the world that I'm alive."

He lifted her up and settled her onto the table. "I don't care what the world thinks. I care that you're right here, right now, with me."

Gwen smiled at that. Lying was easy: just think of it as true. That could be taken as sweet, so she pretended it was sweet, and her smile came naturally. "Alright, Peter."

She leaned in, led the way with the kiss. She leaned back, a hand behind her, and he leaned into her, his kisses working at the edge of her shirt. He undid a button. She reached back with her other hand, fiddling with the things on the table. He might have noticed what she was doing, so she let out a soft sound that implied something he really wanted to believe.

He took in a ragged breath, pulled her close, suddenly voracious.

"Peter," she said. "Peter, just a second."

He pulled back.

"If you keep this up, you're gonna rip my clothes, and don't have a change here. Let me take them off properly."

He grinned as he backed off.

She smiled up at him, then ducked her head and squeezed tightly on the pliers she was holding. As she squeezed, she spun them around front. A gray-white mass exploded from the web-cartridge she crushed. She heard an abbreviated scream, and was unsure if it was cut off from webbing hitting him, or from webbing blocking the sound.

Immediately, the mass of webbing started to wobble, but it didn't move too much. He seemed stronger than before, but the webbing had always been far stronger than he could break. She was just glad it had formed a proper, sticky mass when burst like that.

Next came the difficult part of the plan. While he struggled, Gwen twisted slowly backwards. The webbing was everywhere, but she hadn't yet taken anything off when she came in. She managed to duck partly out of her jacket, and then almost fell free when a sudden shake from Peter set the mass to wobbling. Her hands easily slipped from her gloves, the angle of her hood when she'd ducked had caught the web near her face, and the little bit stuck to her neck came away with only a slight bit of pain. Next was the tricky part of getting her feet out of socks and shoes by main force, but that wasn't too difficult with a hand free to brace on the table.

After a few seconds of struggle, she tumbled free, shivering as her bare skin hit the cement floor. She looked up to see Peter, webbed to a table and the floor, struggling still. She had to hurry. Inside of thirty minutes, the webbing would soften, and he'd rip himself free. Probably sooner, as he wasn't a fool.

Gwen ran over to the entry stairway, and a more thorough perusal swiftly confirmed her initial thought: that door wasn't moving.

However, it was also air-tight. She walked around, looking for a vent, finally finding it when she felt a draft on her legs. She ducked down and eyed it. Not wide, but she wasn't a big girl. Being comatose had been a good diet.

She ran through the place again, searching it quickly. He had a rack of clothes, none of which would fit her. She grabbed a button-down shirt that she could wear like a shirt-dress, a tie to make into a belt, and a coat that would hang to her knees. His shoes were too big, but she grabbed a pair anyways, stuffing all that into her bag.

She paused a moment, knowing she should just keep hurrying, and then decided she still had a few seconds. The first new photos with her brand new camera, pictures of Peter's secret laboratory. She took four, then went back to opening the vent.

Behind her, she heard a muffled yell. She looked up and saw Peter making progress. He had one eye clear of the mass, half his hair tugged out in the process. She fought back tears at the sight of Peter in trouble, but it was easy to harden herself against him. She just had to think of MJ on his bed.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't know what's happening with you, but I don't feel safe around you right now."

With that, she slid into the vent, hissing back a pained breath at the icy chill of the metal. She had to go in nearly-naked, as she barely even fit like that, and metal-on-skin in winter was a bad idea. She slipped in, then around the bend to go upwards. That was painful, a tighter turn than she thought she was meant to take, requiring that she go up halfway, then twist weirdly in place to go up mostly sideways, so her knees didn't bend backwards. She managed it, though, then went up until she found a grate.

Braced with her mass against the walls, she pushed at the vent-cover until it opened, and then spilled onto the floor. The bag, hooked to her with a thin strand of webbing—he had it all right there, after all—she dragged up behind. Gwen dressed herself to look at least passable and started walking away. She tried to blend with the crowd, looked for a subway to run for, and hoped he would be slow to chase.

She reached the corner as a massive clang sounded, followed by screeching tires. Despite herself, Gwen looked back. A panel on the side of the building had bounced into the street, almost hitting a car. Peter was back in costume, crouched on a wall opposite the warehouse he'd been hiding in. Even with that mask and at that distance, she could feel it as their eyes met.

There wasn't a subway in sight, and there was no way she was going to outrun him. She looked around, trying to find a building to go into, but it was all small storefronts, and that would just mean he'd come after her where she was defenseless.

All the same, she prepared to run. He leapt, and her understanding of everything changed. Another man swung in, this one in a black suit with a white spider on it. Instinct took over, and Gwen's instinct had never been to run. She got out her camera and started taking pictures. She didn't like this camera as much as her old one. The shutter didn't click quite the same, and the lenses didn't feel right when she adjusted the focus. It felt sluggish in her hands as she tried to get the shots she needed, even though she knew it was mechanically the same. Well, almost the same, since it was a more recent model.

Same or different, it was a camera and she was behind it. That was nice, even if the whole world had gone mad. Spider-Man slugging it out with Spider-Man, black suit versus red, but no hint of the blue-and-red Peter had always worn. No wonder people had been panicked: the world had gotten thick with Spiders.

The pair shot around a corner, and when she ran after them they were already out of sight. Of course. A fight like theirs never stayed in one place.

Gwen looked around, took pictures of the broken wall of the warehouse, then got an angle inside, to the sealed door. The cops started to arrive, so she made herself scarce. Nothing was to be gained by having her not-dead status discovered by them.

She'd thought she was ready to head to the courthouse and get things rolling, right up until she saw two spider-men fighting it out. It was time to ask someone who might know what was going on with Peter, even if that wasn't an entirely appetizing thought.

* * *

"Oh my god." MJ gaped, standing in the doorway, staring. The Watson house, just beside the Parker residence. It sure made a relationship easy to hide from the parents, Gwen supposed, although the distance hadn't mattered much with her and Peter either, being as he could just walk up the wall and go in the window.

Gwen smiled weakly. "You're telling me. So, any chance we can talk? Privately?"

"You're dead."

"I'm honestly surprised you recognized me so quickly."

MJ looked away, as if embarrassed. "You don't have to stay on the porch."

"Thank you," Gwen said, entering.

MJ led the way upstairs, to where her room was directly opposite Peter's. Gwen looked through the window and could see right into Peter's room, right to his bed. No wonder he noticed her, an aspiring model living next door. It didn't take much of a look to know MJ would make it, if she kept trying as hard as she had been.

"So," Gwen said when MJ stayed nervously silent, "I'm not dead."

"I'm getting that." Mary-Jane sat on the bed, then immediately got back up and began pacing. "You're not dead. I'm thirsty. Do you want something to drink? I'm gonna go get us something to drink."

Gwen just stepped aside as Mary-Jane rushed out of the room. A minute later, she came back upstairs, holding two bottles of water. Gwen took one, then set it aside. Drinking bottled water always seemed ridiculous to Gwen, considering that it was really just tap water, anyways.

"So," Gwen said, "there are a few specific things I want to talk about."

"Such as?"

She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Further searches online had revealed four spiders in New York: One in black, one in red, one in blue with broad red lines, and one in yellow and red that was also female. Gwen wanted to ask about the four spiders, but there was always the chance that Peter hadn't told MJ the truth. Gwen was a lot of things, but a gossip was not one. Secrets stayed kept. "Let's start with the obvious. You and Peter."

MJ swallowed, eyes twitching away. "Yeah. Me and Peter."

Gwen squeezed shut her eyes. Somehow, that reaction made it real, as if it had just been imagination before. Why she suddenly wanted to cry, Gwen didn't know, but it was a struggle to keep her eyes dry. After a moment, she calmed herself and could look at MJ directly. Fortunately, MJ was toying with a throw pillow, as if it were interesting, even though it was clearly just a way to avoid meeting Gwen's eyes.

"It's just-"

"No, I get it," Gwen said. "Smart guy, lives next door, kinda cute, strong, clever, all sorts of heroic. He is heroic, isn't he?"

MJ got an odd look, shrugging. "I dunno. I mean, he's smart and helpful and all that."

"Huh." Gwen glanced back at Peter's room. No need to display superpowers to climb out of that window and in this one. Had he really not told her? "Just how long did you take before you snatched him up?"

"It's not like that," MJ snapped.

"It seems that way."

"Peter had... he didn't deal well when you... look, he had a breakdown. I helped out because his aunt was having trouble with things that week. He was gone for days at a time, no one knew where, wouldn't talk to anyone. I was around a lot."

Gwen scowled. It was the only expression that kept her from showing all her worry at the thought of Peter having a breakdown. Also, it felt right. Nothing was worse than good reasons from an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. Good reasons or no, Gwen was angry. Ever second standing there, looking from MJ's room into Peter's made her angrier. Three months wasn't even that long. Gwen turned from the window, back to MJ. "I bet you were."

MJ glared back. "Don't act like I'm going anywhere just because you came back."

"From the dead."

MJ swallowed. "Yeah."

"Funny, before I, hm, died, I recall you being with Harry. Did you just ditch him, first chance?"

"It's not like that," MJ said, voice soft. Not defensive, just sad.

"What is it like?" Gwen asked.

"It's like Harry's been in a psychiatric institution since a few days after his father got thrown in prison."

"Oh." Good reasons for everything. Gwen was still angry, but now she just felt bad for snapping at Mary-Jane, which was even more annoying, because she really wanted to be angry.

"Look," MJ said, "I don't want it to be bad between us. I mean—"

"No, the new girlfriend never does. After all, the new girlfriend likes the status quo, not the status quo ante."

"There wasn't a war. Things just changed."

Gwen glared.

MJ smiled softly. "It wasn't about—"

"Oh, shut up." Gwen shook her head and started out. "I was stupid to bother with you. Honestly, after you answered my first question, I knew you had nothing for me."

"What first question? About Peter?"

"You don't know anything," Gwen said, leaving.

MJ rushed downstairs after, standing on the porch and watching oddly as Gwen walked away. But she stayed silent, and she stayed away.

* * *

Gwen sat on a park bench, fiddling on her phone. So few good stories about the spiders, so little she actually knew. Specifically, what had happened to Peter? And how had other people gotten those powers? She stared at a blurry photo of the Black Spider fighting the Cobalt Spider—the Bugle had given each his own tag, so they could actually talk about them usefully. Black Spider, Scarlet Spider, Cobalt Spider, and Spider-Woman. They weren't good names, but they at least made it clear which spider was being spoken of.

What she needed was to know who was behind the other masks. She'd found Peter out in a single day. She could do it again. She started where she had before, analyzing photos to get whatever details she could. She didn't have her server yet, but she rented cloud time and loaded some of her old programs. Heights, builds, everything. About five-ten. All of them, even the woman. Builds about the same. Slim, just a hint of muscle, except the woman on that one.

She started tagging sightings, skimming through blogs, and adding them to a map. Maybe they weren't being careful and there would be an easy pattern.

"Hello, Gwen."

Gwen startled so badly she almost fell off the bench. Her phone shot out of her fingers and clattered to the ground. Snatching it back out of the packed-down snow across the path, she looked up at Peter, who had walked up like it was nothing. She eyed him carefully, wiping off her phone and sliding it into her pocket.

"What do you want?" she asked.

His face broke into a smile, but a broken smile, pain clearly written through it. "You're alive. I want to see that you're alive."

"You've already seen," she replied flatly.

His smile faded, brows furrowing in uncertainty, and then his eyes widened in shock or horror or something she didn't quite recognize. "You met one of them first."

"One of who?" Gwen asked.

"The other ones." He scuffed a hand through his hair and spun about, settling onto the bench beside her. "He didn't hurt you, the guy who looked like me, did he?"

"You're saying that wasn't you?"

"I know you've read all the headlines you missed. There's a whole passel of spiders swinging around these days. Thing is, they all seem to think they're me."

"Isn't one of them a woman?" Gwen pointed out.

Peter paused. "Well... I'm not sure what she thinks. But the others say they're me, and they look like me, and they seem to remember everything I remembered."

Gwen sighed and sank back into the bench.

"You look... relieved," Peter said in confusion.

"I did meet one, and he was acting really weird, especially since I'd already seen you with MJ and he acted like he was still single. I was worried something was wrong with you. Like, wrong in the head."

"No, not anymore."

"Anymore?"

He bit at his lip. "I'm fine, really. Look, are you alright. My God, I thought you were dead. How— Are you alright?"

Gwen nodded, ignoring the pain from her shoulder. No need to tell him that the only thing that still hurt was from where he'd hit her. "I'm fine.

There was a moment's silence, Peter deep in thought. She knew that look. "What's this new worry?"

He frowned. "Nothing."

"Oh, like I can't handle it. That's why you didn't tell MJ anything, you think she can't handle it? Well I'm not her."

"She could handle it fine," Peter snapped, but his face fell immediately. "Doesn't mean I want her to. You handled it fine right up until I killed you. Even if I didn't kill you."

"If?"

Peter swallowed. "Well, I figure, if there's clones of me running around, might there be clones of you?"

Gwen paused at that. The great mystery was why she wasn't dead. Half her notes since recovery were ideas about that. She hadn't touched on the idea of being a clone. Still... "No. Clones don't pop out of nowhere, do they? They're something that it takes tons of effort to generate. Of course someone would invest in cloning a super-hero, but why me?"

Peter nodded along.

Gwen found herself immediately falling to doubt of herself. "On the other hand, they're not really clones, are they? I mean, the one I met seemed exactly like you."

"So?"

"Not just somehow magically the right age, but with your memories, too. That's not laboratory cloning. That could be anything. Aliens, weird tech, some freak mutation some guy has, who knows."

Peter nodded along again.

"So, how do I check? How did you know you're the real one?"

"They showed up from nowhere, all around the same time," Peter said. "I was here first, I'm the real me."

"Fine. You're the real you," Gwen said, although she found the argument a little thin. "I, on the other hand, was in a coma for three months, no recollection of what happened, so I have no way of knowing unless I find out."

"No," Peter said, voice harsh.

"No?" Gwen asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, I'm not helping you investigate these clones. They're dangerous. They started out gentle enough, but it turned violent. They're killers. I'm not letting—"

"Not letting?" Gwen stood up, glaring down at him. "How about this. You 'let' me look into them and I'll 'let' you know when I've found out where they came from."

Peter stood as well, reaching for her, stopping when she stepped away. "Gwen, please. I can't—"

"Deal with the fact that you tossed me off a bridge?" she finished for him, tone acidic. A doubt welled up, as if it were wrong to take that tone with Peter, but she quashed it. He wasn't her boyfriend anymore. Besides, he wasn't some shrinking violet, he could handle it. "I'm having a little trouble dealing with it myself, but I'm managing. I suggest you nut up and try it yourself."

His face twisted, raw pain showing before he crushed it all down to a single glare. "I'm not going to help you get yourself in danger again."

"I don't need your help with that," she snapped back, turning on her heel and walking away. It was three steps before she realized how stupid that last line sounded, but she just kept going anyways.


	6. Working Solo

Gwen's new studio apartment was not ideal. There wasn't enough space in the closet for a proper darkroom, so she'd made the studio into the darkroom instead. Blackout curtains and red lights and all the right tables, it all worked fine, except that she then had to leave the room dark for chunks of time. When it was all in her closet, she could be on the computer in her room while things were developing in the closet.

Now, she was sitting on a chair in the closet while chemicals went to work in her apartment. Not ideal, but it worked. While waiting for film to develop, she went through files on her tablet. She read, for the third time, the legal filing she hadn't sent yet. Suing her own mother to get back the money from her father's will, as well as to get the apartment back. It just felt odd.

She delayed sending the filing again, going back to her research. So far, the best photos she'd gotten were an also-there set of shots. She'd been in the vicinity when a Spider-Man fight was reported, and she'd managed rush over and get some good pictures. Pictures of a fight everyone knew about weren't what she wanted, though. Gwen wanted exclusive, and that meant searching.

Before she could dive in again, her phone rang. She checked it and sighed. Peter had, of course, noticed her out there. She declined the call with a text. 'I got some good pictures tonight. You were great.'

Maybe aggravating him wasn't fair, but she did it anyways. He had decided on his course, and he would stick to it right up until he realized she was truly never going to back down. She gave him a week, tops.

Of course, that assumed she could find the clones inside of a week. It had been six days already, and she had nothing. Well, nothing much. A lot more than the other people searching, but nothing much by her standards. 'Spider-War!' the Bugle titled it, running a cover every week and stories every day of how the fighting of the Spiders was ripping the city apart.

It was the fighting, too, which seemed odd to Gwen. Whenever only one Spider showed up, he was dealing with a bad-guy, but whenever two met they started fighting. Peter wouldn't talk about it, which Gwen decided meant it was as much his fault as anyone else's. That said, the one red spider had been a creepy guy, so it was fair to assume the other Spiders had been to blame as well.

She finished plotting every sighting so far, but it just wasn't enough to go off of. It might be better, but she couldn't really use most of the reports. Two in every five sightings weren't entirely clear about which of the Spiders had showed up, and that same amount again were just wherever police had been dispatched to. It was clear that all four Spiders were using police scanners, but there was no way to track that down, at least not with the equipment she could afford.

Gwen went out to her developed film and scanned it all, adding it to the file. The new computer wasn't up to crunching numbers the way she wanted it to, but it would have to do until she could get a real payday. As much as they were the center of the headlines, finding the clones wouldn't be that payday. The big paydays came from amazing shots paired with all the details, and all the details of Peter Parker clones would reveal Peter Parker.

She needed a new angle.

She spent an hour digging around the internet before she went into the more obscure stories, and there is was: 'Lizard-Man Loose In the Sewers!' It was impossible not to smile. She'd found the Lizard before, she could do it again, and then she could go back to the same-old-plan: Start-to-Finish story of a villain, with the photos of Peter kicking its ass.

When she called, Peter picked up on the first ring. He sounded a little annoyed. "Now you want to talk?"

She cut right to the chase. "Seriously, you've not done a thing about the Lizard in three months' time?"

"Are you insulting me, here? I've been running around like mad trying to keep up, and you're pissed because I haven't caught one sewer monster?"

"One sewer monster that you know plenty enough about to find."

"As if you've ever tried chasing some giant Lizard through the— I, Gwen, I'm sorry I'm yelling. I haven't found the Lizard. It always gets away."

"Him. I'm going to find him, and—"

"Please don't go looking for these things anymore." Peter's voice was softer, begging almost.

Gwen smiled. She liked it when he begged. He was an adorable little beggar. "I'll give you the location, and then we'll get me a story and you a bad guy."

"No. I'm not doing this. I won't take the call, and I won't go in." Alright, less begging. He'd come around.

"Fine," Gwen said.

"Don't you dare," Peter snapped. She also liked him when he got fired up, that righteous indignation of his shining so brightly "I know what you're thinking, you're just gonna go right in so I'll go in after you, because you know I won't let you get hurt. Don't you dare do that to me, Gwen!"

Gwen swallowed back some of her irritation. He was right, she had been about to do that. He was also right that it wasn't fair to him. He usually didn't get too indignant if he wasn't also right. "Fine. I won't do that. But I am gonna follow up on this, and I am gonna convince you to go in there. But not by using myself as bait."

"Promise?"

"Promise," Gwen said.

"Thank you."

She ended the call and put her phone back down. Peter hadn't been able to find the Lizard. Of course, Peter wasn't an expert at finding people, he was an expert at precisely three things: Chemistry, Calculus, and Kicking Ass. Unsurprisingly, none of those helped with detective work.

Gwen had to rebuild her files from scratch, as her old hard-drives were gone, but that didn't slow her down too much. She made an all-nighter of it, recovering almost everything she'd originally found, as well as turning up almost sixty new sightings. The Lizard had kept pace. Well, slowed down just a touch, but not significantly. More in line with statistical noise, once she considered the chance that every incident would be reported. The locations were similar to the old pattern too, but that didn't help a lot. The sewers were vast, no matter which region they were entered from.

That was only one angle, though. The key was to get as many angles as possible, so you could really see the shape of a case. The second angle, after the region was known, was the take. The Lizard was targeting clinics, robbing them. The details of that were a matter of public record, if not an entirely easy-to-access one.

It took a few hours to put everything together, print it up as a FOIA request, and then it was off to the police records office, where the cop behind the desk glared when he saw her name and signature. "Gwen Stacy's dead."

Gwen produced the official court document that reversed her death certificate. "I was in a coma. There's a retraction on the obituaries page on the Bugle's website."

"Really?"

"No, it's just a joke I tell to break the ice."

He snorted a laugh at that, then started tapping away at his keyboard. "Well, sure enough. 'Posthumous Photograph No Longer Posthumous.' How was this not big news?"

Gwen shrugged, like it was nothing. The truth was, she timed it carefully so that her reveal would happen midday on the same day that a particular escort would give a big interview about her affair with a senator. It was easy to bury news, if you knew what you were doing. "So, any chance I can get those documents?"

"It'll take a bit."

Gwen nodded. "I'll wait."

"Uh, it could be hours," the cop said.

Gwen knew that what he meant was he might mail it to her in a week, because he didn't really want to do it. She sat down in a chair in the hall and pulled out her tablet. She could work from anywhere, but she could only keep him on-task from there. "I'll check back every thirty or forty minutes."

He groaned and got to work. While he printed out police reports, she began going through her photos. She'd given the Bugle the good ones, but she felt like skimming through them again, anyways. She felt off, with her new camera. The shutter just felt sluggish, like she was out-of-sync. What she needed were some good practice shots. Maybe a few landscapes, instead of always trying to catch Peter and the Spiders—new band name—kicking ass.

She smiled at a picture of Peter spinning about while a strand of webbing from the Scarlet Spider—thus had the Bugle dubbed the red one—arced by. The man looked like a dancer. Of course, guys got all awkward when you said they looked like they did ballet, but ballet dancers were buff and awesome, as far as Gwen was concerned. She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to block out thoughts of Peter.

He was the still the one she thought of at night. It had been two weeks since she fell off that bridge, as far as she was concerned. Just one really long nap, but he was gone all the same, and fantasizing about holding him close didn't help anyone.

Alright, closing her eyes didn't help banish thoughts. More the opposite, really. She flicked to the next picture, and the next, trying to look at not-Peter. Looking at pictures wasn't—

Gwen stopped, staring. She sent an enlargement and enhancement command back to her desktop computer, trying to get a good shot of the corner of that picture, of a little smear of red. The computer was working with the same stuff, so it couldn't do too much. She'd have to get the original film again and do a real print if she wanted quality, but Gwen knew what she'd see: A third spider, standing and watching. Red, with a big yellow spider on the front of the outfit. Spider-Woman.

Although it seemed obvious that no clone of Peter would be a female, it also seemed obvious that no random woman would have identical superpowers and show up at the exact same time as two clones of Peter. But even more than the timing and the sticking to walls, it was the webbing. All four spiders used the same chemical webbing mixture, which only Peter knew how to make.

The odd thing was, the female spider wasn't in on the fights. Gwen hadn't thought much of it—the woman had only a few sightings, far less than the men—but now she had a new thought. If this female Peter—god, that was terrible—if she was watching the other fights but not joining, she wasn't being seen because she was sneaking around and watching.

Gwen had a hunch. It was a stupid hunch, a dangerous hunch, but she was going to follow up on it all the same. She separated out all the Spider-Woman stories from the other Spider stories and started giving them a new look.

* * *

It could have been any Brooklyn apartment building, relatively modern but not truly new, but it wasn't. Perhaps she was just being silly, believing in a gut feeling that screamed 'it has to be here'. Silly or not, she was certain. The Spider-Woman was in there. Maybe not at that exact moment, but that was where she holed up.

There were too many sightings in the vicinity, too many YouTube videos with her swinging overhead near there. That exact city block. The block where Gwen's old apartment remained. The litigation for control had just begun, coinciding with an emancipation request and a separate lawsuit for her father's pension. It wouldn't be Gwen's apartment again for quite a while. Eventually it would be, though.

She walked through the lobby and pushed the up arrow. The elevator dinging open immediately, and she began an all-too-familiar ascent. It felt like going home, except she didn't expect to be welcomed.

The elevator doors slid open on floor five and she walked down the hall, past the stairs, to her door. There were seals on the door. Signed, glued-on paper seals. She could have ripped them off and walked in anyways, but she didn't want to cause trouble. The lawyers insisted the lawsuit would finish inside of a month if all went well, and she wasn't more than an amateur when it came to the law, although she had learned a bit to help with the detectiving. Whatever the time-frame, breaking the seals would not help.

Still, she wanted in, and there was always a way in. She stared at the door, as if she could simply bore her way in with a gaze. It wasn't the lock, it was the seals. Maybe she could— No, not worth forgery, better to break them. Or she-

"Can't go in that way," a woman said from behind. Gwen spun. The woman was tall, looking even taller on account of her sleek build. She wore loose jeans, a T-shirt with a snarky comment on it, and a backpack.

No need to go in after all. "So," Gwen said, "the costume's in the bag?"

"Yeah. Head outside and I'll take you up to the window."

"And I should trust you, why?"

"Because up until a month ago, all I could recall was being Peter Parker, and Peter Parker loved Gwen Stacy."

The comment left Gwen silent. It was so flatly stated, so blatant. All Spider-Woman could recall was being Peter Parker. What was going on? Doubts and confusion aside, her question still stood. "So you remember killing me. Why should I believe that you actually believe it's me?"

"I already checked," Spider-Woman said. "You're no impostor, unless you're some clone. But then again, I'm a clone, too, so there's that."

You're a clone? Gwen thought, but she said, "You checked?"

"When I saw the obit reversal in the Bugle, I started being spotted around here more often. An impostor wouldn't have figured it out after two days of sightings on blogs and YouTube, and they definitely wouldn't have gone straight to the right apartment."

Gwen sighed and glanced around. "Convinced or not, let's not have this conversation in a hallway anymore."

Spider-Woman smiled her agreement and they headed down together. Back in the alley, Gwen was swept up just as Peter had always scooped her off the ground, right down to the little squeeze around the hips. No webbing, though, just a few quick jumps kicked off of walls and they were planted alongside the window.

Spider-Woman paused, just holding Gwen, looking at her, as if struck. Gwen stared back. Spider-Woman blinked, and the moment ended. She opened the window and lifted Gwen in.

The room was exactly as she had left it, except that the bed was made and the computer was off.

Spider-Woman stepped in beside Gwen. "You'll get the lease, right?"

"I think I'll win the case."

"Good. I was worried when I saw the seals. Some wrangle between the landlord and your mother."

"And since it's sealed, you feel safe staying her?" Gwen said. "In my room?"

Spider-Woman blushed. A wash of red, right to her ears. She even ducked her eyes towards her toes. "No, uh, no. I took over you're d—, Mr. Stacy's room. Not yours. I kept it like this, because..."

"Kinda weird," Gwen said softly.

"Weird?"

"You're not my boyfriend. Also, did you try to feel me up outside of the window?"

Spider-Woman scowled. "Hey, this is weirder for me than it is for you. I remember us being crazy about each other, but now you look at me like a total stranger, and let's not get started on the whole sex thing."

"You know, once you say that, you have to get started on the whole sex thing."

"I mean, I'm not a guy, now. But every memory I have, all my instinctive thoughts, they're still like that. Hormones are all female, though. It's... confusing."

"Alright, I guess that's weird." Gwen glanced around the room, searching for a good way to change the topic, and decided even a bad way would do. "I don't think I want the details, not really. So... what's your name?"

"Uh, well..." Spider-Woman trailed off, then gave an awkward smile. "Peter?"

Gwen groaned. "Wow, you're exactly like him. You never even thought about a new name, did you? You're not him, you're not even a guy. Pick a new name already. And not just some stupid anagram."

"Pareept Kerr, like I'm Indian or something."

"That was quick."

"I've thought about it, really I have, and I did decide an anagram would be stupid, but picking a name isn't easy. It's gotta be perfect."

"Why?" Gwen asked. "Most people never get a choice, they're just stuck with what they'd got at birth. I didn't pick Gwendolyn. Who cares?"

Spider-Woman looked skeptical. "Just a name?"

"Any name. Um, first girl you met in school, ever, go!"

"Uh..." Spider-Woman scrunched her brow in thought. "I think there was a Jessica in kindergarten."

"Alright, Jessica. What's your last name? Let's go with, favorite book character."

"So you'd be Nancy Drew, or something?" Jessica asked.

"Perfect, you're Jessica Drew," Gwen announced.

"Hey, wait, that's not my favorite character. It's just—"

"Nobody cares, it's just a name. Now, Jess, since I can actually address you by your name now, let's move on to more important things."

"That's it? I get no say?"

"You got more say in your name than I got in mine. Now, more important things.

Jessica scowled. "Fine. Whatever. I can always change it later if I want to."

"Well, decide soon," Gwen told Jessica. "I'm gonna make you a fake history and some identification tonight or tomorrow, once my stuff's all running again. You need one, you know."

"God, fake IDs and histories."

"Fake histories, real identification," Gwen replied. "Now, more important things."

Jessica's eyes narrowed, then widened with sudden realization. "Damnit, you're here because Peter wasn't playing along. You've got your teeth into something and he won't help."

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, come on. I've got his memories. I think like him. I remember seeing you fall off that bridge, and the thought of you going out again terrifies me. So you found something, but he said no. He refused to cooperate."

"But you're not saying no?" Gwen asked.

"I'm considering it." Jessica scowled. "Of course, I'm single, and I don't have a family, or a job, and I'm squatting in your apartment, so it's not so easy for me to say no."

"And you understand," Gwen said. "You're trying to find a place in the world. Most of the world still thinks I'm dead, but I'm not. I can't just go back to school and be that-miracle-girl-who-didn't-die. God, I've got an appointment with a school counselor next week, because if I don't show responsibility my emancipation might not go through, and that is literally the last thing I want to do. I need a life, I need income. I need to get things moving again, and there's only one way to do that."

"Let me guess: it's really dangerous."

"Good guess," Gwen replied. More seriously, she continued, "I need money, and I have a simple formula for making money: I find a hero and a villain, I take pictures of them fighting. It works pretty well. But it's not just the money, it's the answers, too."

"Answers?" Jessica asked.

"Let's be honest, here," Gwen said. "Everyone that saw me fall off that bridge thought I died. Not just people: math and physics agree: I should be dead. But I'm not. I want to know why."

Jessica looked aside. "The thought had occurred to me."

"I'm looking into that. Trust me, everything I can bring to bear is being brought to bear. But I refuse to let that be my entire life. I'm going to keep on with other things, because that's just not that important, not really."

"Not that important?"

Gwen shrugged, knowing she was lying even as she spoke. "I'm alive now. Isn't that enough?" It wasn't enough, but she hated the idea that she would let her desperation show. She had to know, had to find out, but she didn't have to let them see it.

"I suppose it is," Jessica said softly, not recognizing the evasion. Peter had never been able to spot Gwen's lies, either.

"So, back to where we were: I've found the villain. I'm hoping I've found a hero."

"You're moving on and I'm, well, let me show you."

"Show me what?" Gwen asked.

Jessica walked towards the door. "What I've done with the place."

Gwen followed Jessica out into what had been the den, to find that the carpet was gone, as well the furnishings, leaving open wood floor and walls hung with pictures. Not just any pictures: Bugle cover photos.

Gwen walked to the center of the space, slowly turning about and taking it all in. Seven cover photos in three months, the most meteoric rise of a photographer in living memory. She finished her turn, looking back the way she came, and saw her final photo on the small piece of wall between the kitchen and the hall. 'Spider-Man Fails New York', her posthumous cover.

"That's me," Jessica said with a sigh. "I'm making shrines to dead girlfriends and sleeping in their abandoned apartments. Truth is, I'm a mess. You don't want me as your hero."

Gwen smiled, still looking at that final photo. "I was worried it wouldn't come out."

"What?"

"The photo, the picture of Peter as I fell. I was worried it wouldn't come out, but it's magnificent."

"That's what you're thinking about right now?" Jessica snapped.

"Well, yeah. I mean, it's better than listening to you whine about being a mess. Everyone's a mess. I'm sneaking around the city searching for clones of my ex-boyfriend. I rent a tiny studio apartment and use the main room to develop film while I sleep in a closet with a bed that doubles as the chair in front of my tiny computer desk. I've already been attacked by one clone of my ex-boyfriend, and-"

"You what?" Jessica snapped, jumping up and landing up a wall, a hand on the ceiling, body tight.

Gwen held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Woah, settle. I'm fine. He just was a little overwrought and I had to give him the slip. The point is, my life's a mess."

Jessica slowly stepped back to the floor. "Fine, everyone's a mess. You still don't want me."

"God, get some self-esteem, girl. Besides, just because my friendly neighborhood superhero is nervous doesn't mean I'm gonna let the Lizard keep running free."

"Wait, the Lizard? You can't have found the Lizard," Jessica said in shock. "We've all searched. We've scoured the sewers. Heck, half the times I've gotten in a scuffle with one of the boys has been down there. The cops have run sweeps too. Everyone's got an eye out for that thing."

"Apparently you don't remember how this works," Gwen said. "I'm the detective, you're the muscle. Some fancy new tits don't change that."

Jessica glance down at herself, quizzically.

"God, stop ogling yourself."

"I wasn't-"

"Yes," Gwen said, "you were. Now, accept that I'm the detective and you're not."

"Fine, let's hear your genius strategy that found this thing."

"This man," Gwen insisted.

Jessica rolled her eyes.

"It matters. If you think of him as a thing, you search for a thing."

"Fine, this man."

"Good," Gwen said. "This man, does he raid gas stations?"

"What?"

Gwen quirked an eyebrow.

"Fine, I'll play along," Jessica said. "No, he doesn't raid gas stations."

"And was a generator stolen earlier in his spree?"

"No, of course— damn, he's been stealing machines, hasn't he?"

"He stole a dozen different machines, a few of them repeats, right at the start, then mostly chemicals, another machine after several months—a repeat again—but then just chemicals. But he's not stealing fuel or generators or batteries. Therefore, he's on the grid somewhere, drawing lots of electrical power. And I mean lots. These aren't low-power machines he's running. One or two would be easy to miss, but he's stolen fifteen in total. Unless they're all breaking, he'll light up on the grid." Gwen paused in her thought, biting at her lip and scrunching her brow in an over-acting of intense thought. "Hey, wait, didn't I figure out how to track things down on the grid before?"

Jessica sighed. "Yes, you did."

"See why I'm the detective and you're the hero?"

"Still, a power station in the sewer?"

"There isn't one. Also, the cops run searches for grow-house levels of power usage, and none of those turned him up. So he's in a place with enough power draw to mask his usage, but also somewhere to hide, and also good access to the sewers."

"Could you just tell me where he is and stop showing off?"

Gwen tilted her head in surprise. "But I thought you were sure I couldn't have found him, that you'd searched everywhere already."

"You're the detective. Get on with it."

"The sewers have some connections to the subway tunnels, and the subway tunnels have several disused lines, and disused lines have disused maintenance rooms, which have power connections. Specifically, there's a room on a prospective line across Brooklyn that has heavy power draw. The subway runs there, passes that room, but the room is controlling power for the line after it forks, not before. That room should be powering a set of lights, as there is some work down that way, but not the entire line. That's not the only irregular power draw, but it's the only one that aligns well with the sewer system. Besides, if it doesn't pan out, I can check others."

"It seems obvious, in retrospect."

"Everything seems obvious once someone does all the work and explains it to you." Gwen smiled, softening the jab. "So, I'm a detective, and I've found a villain. Have I found a hero?"

Jessica looked past Gwen, looked at the photograph of Peter, clawing his way from the symbiote and spraying a strand of desperate webbing downwards. That night had started with the Lizard, and had went wrong because the Lizard had been winning the fight until the symbiote added its strength to hers. To Peter's really. It was difficult to separate herself from those memories, sometimes, to remember that she was a different person. Perhaps still a hero, though.

She looked to Gwen and said proudly, "You've found someone stupid enough to try."

* * *

Gwen walked the narrow ledge alongside the subway line as swiftly as she could manage without actually running. She really didn't want to risk a fall, but she also didn't want to be stuck there when the next train rolled by.

Three more minutes if it wasn't early. For once, she hoped a train wasn't on time.

Maintenance door 17-A came up. Not the one she wanted, but she opened it anyways, stepping inside. It was tiny, half the size of her bedroom, and most of that space taken up by what looked to be massive breaker boxes. It barely seemed possible that a space that size could house the Lizard, much less all his stolen machinery. Hopefully 17-C was larger than 17-A.

She glanced at her phone, watching seconds tick by. A rumbling shook the room, vibrated her bones, then faded seconds later. The train past, she stepped out and hurried onward.

Twelve more minutes before a train was supposed to come through. She'd memorized the schedule while coming over, more out of nervous habit than actually needing to know. She passed 17-B soon, but it was a ways further on to 17-C. Six more minutes until a train arrived, if it wasn't early.

She took a picture, then another. The massive door, no lock on it, was the beginning of this story, or at least the beginning of the story the Bugle would get.

Gwen glanced at her phone again. Five more minutes for the train. Jessica was supposed to be there already. Gwen didn't want to go in on her own, but she also didn't want to just wait outside forever. She pressed an ear against the door and heard nothing within. No Lizard yet, no danger. Right? She held her ear there, listening longer. Still nothing.

She opened the door.

The lights in the subway tunnel were dim to start with, and with no lights inside the tiny room was utterly dark. She slid inside and immediately bumped against a breaker box, implying that the space was even more cramped than 17-A had been. She brushed a hand across the wall and found a switch where she expected, but no light came on.

A breeze wafted past, carrying the stench of old food, or perhaps just rot and decay more generally. The place was too small for a breeze.

She swallowed a lump of fear and turned on her phone, blinking as the flash of light blinded her. She blinked a few times and could see again, determining that the room was slightly larger than the last, but still not large enough. She turned the phone's dim glow towards the far end of the room and found a gap where there should have been a floor. Initially, the space had been too small, so the Lizard had expanded it. He was in the sewers, even, just broken down from above. Whatever sewer-space he had found, it was well enough secluded that the sweeps had missed him.

Gwen turned her phone off and slipped it into her pocket. She stared at the darkness. Crouching down, she huddled behind her camera, waiting. She hadn't heard the Lizard, but she wouldn't have. He could be down there at that very moment. He could have seen her phone lighting the space. He could be moving her way that very moment.

A train rumbled by, shaking the door, shaking Gwen's bones, speeding her already racing heart. Jessica had to come soon. She had to.

As she waited, Gwen's eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was actually a dim light coming up from below, bits of green in places, red in others. LEDs on equipment, she realized. Indicator lights and nothing more. She wondered if the Lizard needed light, or if he worked in total darkness.

Silence held, painful. Each passing second dug the silence into Gwen deeper, a knife into her side, pinching her breath and knotting her stomach. The Lizard was down there, but running wouldn't help. Patience. Silence. Waiting.

She closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind. Nothing but breathing, steadily, smoothly, in and out.

A clang sounded outside, and Gwen felt her breath escape in a gasp of relief. Jessica. God, let it be Jessica, not the Lizard coming through the subway tunnels instead of the sewers. She aimed her camera at the door. With a screech of twisting metal, the door ripped its upper hinge loose and fell into the room, hitting a breaker box and twisting to the floor with a serious of deafening clangs.

Standing there, silhouetted by subway lights, was Jessica in her red and yellow outfit. "Sorry," she said, gesturing. "Traffic."

Gwen took a picture just as the target of the gesture rushed into view, a man in a black outfit with a white spider across the chest. The Black Spider, as the Bugle called him, leapt at Jessica, yelling, "Die, abomination!"

She ducked and he went past her, and then the two of them were fighting in the maintenance room. Gwen huddled against the wall, trying to make herself small, and kept taking pictures.

As she snapped shots, a voice in the back of her mind began to panic. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw twin glints in the darkness. Of course the Lizard didn't just work there, he slept there, and he might not have seen her phone, but he wasn't that deep of a sleeper.

She screamed as she twisted about, falling onto her back and aiming the camera as he lunged, captured a picture of a maw of razor teeth leading a green monstrosity to boil into the tight space.

He muscled into the space, too massive by far, denting the boxes aside as he slashed his claws. Behind, his tail lashed and chipped stone from the opening he had torn in the floor. The two spiders turned into flickers of motion, deftly avoiding tooth and claw. Gwen wasn't entirely sure how they kept moving. The space was too small, but still they leapt about, still they evaded those scything claws.

The Lizard was cutting into cement when its claws missed and hit a wall. One swipe ripped the steel off the face of a breaker box and hurled it spinning into the room. Gwen flinched as it bounced past, huddling deeper into the corner she'd found.

Gwen had seen enough of Peter in action to know that a space that tight was a death-trap for him, and apparently Jessica and the Black Spider agreed. Almost in unison, they dove over a sweep of the Lizard's tail and flipped through the gap into the space below, crouching on a wall and looking up at him, waiting for him to come after them.

He turned in the space, displaying a disturbing flexibility, as if his entire skeleton were malleable. He should have barely fit in the room, yet he could turn around without even damaging the equipment around him. Staring down at the pair, the Lizard again showed more thought than most of Peter's human foes could manage.

He looked aside, looked at Gwen, eyes gleaming cruelly. Both spiders screamed when he lunged, and Gwen's own shriek rose over theirs. Rough, scaly hide abraded her skin even through her shirt, and his claws easily pierced the fabric and rested cold and terrifying against her skin.

One hand enwrapped her waist with ease, and he lifted her high, but he was barely paying any attention to her, his eyes were on the spiders. He began to squeeze.

Gwen flashed back to that moment he lay on the ground, when he and Peter fought, his lungs failing as he died. There had been human pain in his eyes then, human emotion, not just the cold calculation she saw as he slowly crushed her to draw them into a trap.

Gathering what breath she could, Gwen said, "I don't regret saving you."

His grip loosened, and he swiveled his head oddly in her direction, a wholly inhuman motion as the neck twisted further than any human neck could manage, yet with a human look of surprise and confusion in his eyes. A rumble came from his throat, and she got the impression it was meant to form words.

It seemed as if something important might change in that moment, but the moment was interrupted.

Jessica landed right in front of Gwen, wrapped about the lizard's arm, gripping his hand with all her strength, while the Black Spider latched onto his shoulders and pummeled the Lizard's head and neck. The Lizard didn't lose his grip, but he did stumble backward, wedging tight into the human-sized doorway. His bulk seemed impossible to fit through the space. His shoulders were broader than the gap, and he was so tall that, were he upright, his head would be easily five feet above the peak of the door.

Still, he simply kept with the motion. He tucked his shoulders, twisted, and pulled through the doorway. The four of them tumbled from the platform and landed on the tracks, the two spiders leaping free as the Lizard slammed down hard. He tossed Gwen aside as he burst into motion, roaring towards the pair.

Gwen's head was pounding, and her heart was racing so fast she could feel it all through her body, but she forced all that aside. She didn't stand, that hurt too much right then. She stared down the tracks and saw them fighting. A slow, sickly smile crossed her face. Even then, she was thinking about getting a picture. A strange madness, she mused, that the world made more sense through a lens. She lined up the shot and the flutter of fear drifted from the forefront of her mind. One more, and then she gathered herself, decided the pain in her hip and her shoulder didn't matter, and stood.

She lined up another shot, this one with all three in frame—Jessica was ducking under the Lizard's sweeping tail while the Black Spider tugged on a strand of webbing to pull himself towards the ceiling so the Lizard would miss with his deadly jaws—when they were silhouetted by the lights of an oncoming train.

"Shit." Gwen lunged for the walkway, scrambling to climb up. A thunderous crash sounded, and when a weight hit her and she was sure it was all over.

Gwen didn't die, though. She didn't even get sent into black unconsciousness and a potential chance to discover what had saved her when she fell from the bridge. This time, Gwen was going to be fine, at least a moment more. She was wrapped in Jessica's arms as the woman tumbled gracefully through the air. They wove between the shattered edges of the windshield, twisted through the gap of a torn-down door, and slid smoothly slid to a halt in midair when Jessica pinned two posts with webbing.

The train was chaos. The conductor wasn't hitting the brakes, so it kept roaring along, but in those few seconds the Lizard had ripped through that leading car into a passenger space, and those people were screaming and trying to run. The Black Spider fought the Lizard with desperate swiftness, both showing a close to fatal disregard for those around them.

Jessica settled Gwen down, then leapt back into the fray. Gwen gathered herself, fighting off the shakes from that close brush with death. She changed her film, then went back to documenting the fight.

It was brutal. The Black Spider had ripped a post from the floor to use as a club, but the Lizard had promptly broken that club in half. Now, the Black Spider wielded each half as a baton, swinging them in a blur of motion as swift footwork kept him running about the narrow space.

The Lizard tried to advance too quickly for the Black Spider, but Jessica was behind him, webbing his feet and hands as swiftly as she could manage, trying to slow him down. Mostly, he tore the webbing with ease, but sometimes she made him stumble, and his every stumble gave both her and the Black Spider a chance to land some solid blows.

Jessica couldn't give it her all, though. She kept rushing about, getting civilians clear, keeping the people fleeing further up the train. The fight was moving swiftly, ripping through the partitions between the cars, and there was no doubt they would run out of space soon.

Gwen had to run forward to get good pictures again, although she did take a few long shots. She got to the third car forward, taking pictures of the fourth, when she saw a station shoot past.

The train wasn't stopping. Letting the camera fall to the end of its lanyard, she rushed to the end of the car and tugged down the emergency-brake lever.

Nothing happened.

It shouldn't have been too surprising. A glance at the metal around the panel showed that it was almost completely destroyed. She ran to the next car and tried again. Nothing. She dashed all the way to where she'd hurtled into the train, those first spaces they'd so swiftly tumbled through. Navigating back through the tangle of glass and steel with her human strength and agility was a struggle, but she did her best to rush, making her way to the front and scanning the controls in what little light her phone could provide.

Behind her, roars of pain and anger, crashes of breaking glass and screeches of tearing steel, and the steady screams of civilians all melded into a roar of terror. Gwen knew she had to stop the train or none of those people would be able to get off, but she paused when she finally found the brakes. If they stopped in the middle of the tunnel, that would be no better.

Gwen looked across the panel, trying to find a location indicator, and then a hint of light came from up ahead. She looked at it, saw a station approaching, waited a few seconds, until the station was just getting there, and then pushed the brakes to a full stop.

She almost fell out the front as the sudden shift slammed her against the controls, just behind the missing windshield. After the initial jolt, it was easy to adjust and stand up, watching her car slide past the station, the cars behind her ending up mostly along the platform. She rushed back the way she'd come, readying herself to take more pictures.

When she reached the second car, the first chance she had, Gwen stepped onto the platform and took a stream of pictures of people fleeing the chaos, then she stepped back in and ran down the way. As she went, she kept pausing and taking pictures.

These were excellent shots, the sort that magazine stories were built around, but she doubted any would make it to the Bugle, except perhaps on some slideshow on the website. She took them anyways. The wreckage of the third car, the entire top ripped clear and turned into a tangle atop the next car down. A woman huddled in a corner, shaking and crying. She was aiming for a photo of the remnants of someone's briefcase, torn wide with papers scattered, when the fight came back her way.

The Lizard roared, the sound shaking Gwen to her bones, and the Black Spider went bouncing down the torn-open length of the stopped train. Gwen fell onto her butt, barely dodging him as he hurtled past and bounced to a stop just a few paces distant.

The shot was perfect. Torn open black suit revealing soft pink skin, bloody scrapes, and a patch of brown hair. He had one hand on the ground, struggling to push himself upright. Even with his formidable strength, the struggle was plain.

Seeing him fight for it, Gwen's heart fluttered, and even knowing it wasn't the real Peter, she had to go to him. "Are you alright?"

He stared at her, speechless.

She let him stand on his own, then turned to go. "I've gotta go see if J— Spider Woman's still up there."

Gotta reacquire the habit of not saying names in public, she thought as she rushed ahead. Too easy to give it all away. Two cars down, Jessica was doing a spectacular job of evading the Lizard. She did flips off of walls, darted out one window and back in another, always kept moving with that stunning spider speed. What she didn't do was hit him. She dodged and dodged and dodged, but she couldn't even find the time to take a swing, much less land a blow.

Gwen went through half a roll of film on that, then paused. There wouldn't be anything until Jessica misstepped, and that was what was coming. The Lizard wasn't even fighting hard enough that a misstep was in the cards for him. Perhaps Peter had been right, perhaps Gwen had pushed it too far, risked too much.

No, she refused to believe that. She started looking for something to work with. Nothing seemed great, but they were in a subway. There was rather a lot of current in that third rail, if she could find a way to make it work. A length of cable—the ripped open cars had plenty of exposed cabling—and some careful prep and a deadly trap could be made. She looked back to the fight, trying to judge if she had time, and saw that the situation had changed in those seconds. She raised her camera and got back to work.

Hard slugs of webbing, like softened bullets, slammed into the Lizard, staggering him. Rushing in behind those slugs was a red-clad spider, the Scarlet Spider in Bugle-speak. Another web-slinger, swinging to the rescue.

"I'll handle this," he said, cocky as could be, as if he were the only spider to ever think of fighting the Lizard.

With the Scarlet Spider joining the fray, the fight grew more chaotic, started moving faster, and Gwen had to run clear, get more distance for any future pictures. She was just one of the many clustered on the platform, looking into the train car as the fight drifted up and down the train.

It immediately became clear, at least to Gwen's experienced eye, that the Scarlet Spider was a master of webwork. He was constantly sending little orbs of sticky webbing to key places. He would pin a foot to the floor just before it lifted, peg a strand between the tail and the wall to check a tail swipe, or once even web himself onto a swinging tail to add the Lizard's strength to his own kick.

With the Scarlet Spider working his webwork magic and Jessica still taunting the Lizard into wasted energy on constant assault, the tenor of the battle was different, but the result clearly wasn't changing. That leathery hide didn't mind their spider strength. Those webs couldn't resist the Lizard's power.

Gwen lowered her camera again, looking to that third rail once more. There had to be enough wires around to work with, except she wasn't even sure how to make the trap work if she could make it. There was no way to even say the Lizard would fall for it. He certainly wasn't a fool.

After what seemed to have been an eternity, although time always felt that way when Peter—or apparently any spider—was fighting, a train pulled up from the opposite direction. Couldn't even get to the third rail, now. Gwen sighed and settled back to a fairly safe corner, looking to the fight once more. No way for her to win this; they would have to do it themselves. Then the train opposite started away again, its conductor presumably seeing the chaos and wanting no part of it.

Gwen looked back to the fight, wondering if there was any way to trick the Lizard into a trap like that, or if perhaps Jessica and the Scarlet Spider could manage things on their own. The odds didn't look to be in their favor, but a glance aside changed everything. Hurtling down the stairwell, as much running on the ceiling as leaping over peoples' heads, came a man in a red suit with black web-lines. Peter.

It may have been irrational to suddenly feel safe—the others had proven themselves every bit as strong and skillful as she would have expected—but she did feel safe. Peter wouldn't let her down. And as he arrived, the difference was instantly plain.

"Is this the E?" he bantered. Right into danger and joking around, not silently struggling as the others seemed to be doing.

Well, except Jessica. She bantered right back. "Sorry, out of order. Might be a few minutes"

"Darn, I'm gonna miss my meeting," Peter said, then kicked the Lizard in the head.

The Scarlet Spider looked up at the arrival, but while Jessica and Peter seemed able to banter while fighting, he was genuinely distracted. The Lizard's tail slammed him in the chest, sending him out the side of the train like a fastball. He hit one of the pylons between the tracks, bouncing back onto the train he'd left from.

"Woah, you alright?" Peter called as he dove past the Lizard's sweeping tail. "I mean, I know I'm annoying, but you didn't have to leave all sudden-like."

The Scarlet Spider groaned and failed to stand until he used a post to push himself up.

"He's fine," Jessica announced. "He usually sounds like that."

Even the Lizard sensed the difference in Peter, and it wasn't just the banter. Dodging with room to spare, Peter was peppering in a jab for every attempt at him, two for any taken at Jessica. He barely seemed bothered by the attacks, like dodging them was completely routine, just a walk down the street.

Unfortunately, the Lizard adjusted tactics. He turned his back on Peter entirely and rushed Jessica. She tried to dodge, but this wasn't like his other assaults. She got out of the car and he ripped through the side, leaping across the platform towards her, pressing ever-closer, backing her towards a corner. She tried to kick up the wall, then off the ceiling and away, but he shouldered into a support pylon and sent a wave of shattered cement to where she was dodging. The stone hit her, and he grabbed her by the ankle, swinging her around like a club.

The entire time, Peter had been sending webbing and landing blows on the Lizard's back, but the Lizard wasn't letting the blows distract him. Gwen took another picture as Jessica was dragged from the rubble and swung at Peter, the perfect shot if the Bugle wanted these spiders to look bad.

The shot after that changed things a bit, as Peter slipped around Jessica, grabbed onto her, kicked the Lizard's claw loose, and sent the pair hurtling away with a single strand of webbing. Jessica rolled out of the dive, getting well clear, but Peter just flipped back towards the Lizard, landing a pace distant.

"Well, this is awkward. With everyone else gone, this almost feels like a date. Do you think they're trying to set us up?"

The Lizard roared.

"I'm sorry, I just don't feel the same way."

The Lizard slashed at Peter, rushing him, trying to back him into a corner.

"Hey, no hands on the first date. This is strictly over-the-shirt."

As Peter bantered, he backed into the train, towards the tunnel where the engine and the first car rested, away from the platform and its open space. The Lizard was more than happy to take the fight into a darker, enclosed.

Skipping back a step from a leap that left the Lizard crouched low enough to be near Peter's eye level, claws cutting into the floor of the car, Peter gave an over-acted shrug. "Fine, be that way. It's not you, it's me. We should see other people. We were better as friends. Nothing? Let's try this."

The Lizard swiped, and Peter jumped into it, planting both feet in the Lizard's chest. He kicked off, and only as he hurtled away did Gwen see the webbing that had pinned the Lizard's heels to the floor. Not something he couldn't rip free from, but enough to spoil his balance, send him tumbling over backwards, out of a gap in the opposite wall, onto the tracks just past the train.

Peter shot from the Lizard like a bullet, out a torn-open gap in the side of the train car, landing with his hands on the wall, folding double and bracing himself between the wall and the train. Gwen had just gotten a dozen amazing photos, but she knew this was the shot of the end of the fight, and that was always worth something.

Peter flexed, and the entire train rocked, then tumbled from its tracks, settling with a crash onto the Lizard. It crashed onto the Lizard, but not onto the ground. The entire mass creaked, shifting as the Lizard shifted. Gwen jumped down beside the train, getting a shot underneath, a shot of the Lizard on all fours, the train on its back. The Lizard surged, and the train flipped off his back, crunching against the wall behind him.

Claws out, snout open just a hair to show a cruel expanse of deadly teeth, eyes shining in the lights of the tunnel, the wreckage of a subway engine behind him, that was quite a picture, and Gwen made sure she got it.

Peter had no concern for the look of the moment, but he pause a moment for another quip. "Fine, we'll try a second date. Batting practice?"

The Lizard leapt, and then tumbled aside as a ten foot section of steel track clocked him in the jaw. He landed in a web. Behind the web, the Scarlet Spider stood. He was unsteady, clearly favoring one leg, but that didn't impede his web-shooters.

The Lizard began to tear loose, and this time Peter's blow was overhead, slamming the Lizard to the ground. The web tore from its moorings, fluttering about to wrap the Lizard like a cocoon. Alongside the Scarlet Spider, the Black Spider limped up and added his webbing, and then Jessica joined them as well. Peter leaned the rail against the wall and poured on a layer of his own.

And Gwen got a great picture of all four spiders working together to take down the Lizard.

Glancing aside, she made sure nobody was nearby, and said, "My place, all of you. If you care about me even slightly, you'll be there. That means all of you, and no fighting."

Gwen turned and started running for the platform.

"Where do you think you're going?" Peter asked.

Gwen put a hand to her ear. "What is that noise? Is that sirens? I sure hope they don't stumble on one of your, barely-able-to-stand clones and unmasks him? You'd better take care of that."

With those words, she began sprinting back the way the train had come, although she swiftly fell to a jog, as she was not made to sprint that far. She had to get back to the Lizard's lair to get some pictures of the interior before the cops got into it.

Behind her she could hear Peter snarl, "This has got to stop."

"I'm just getting started," she said, even though he wouldn't be able to hear her.


	7. That Whole Responsibility Thing

Gwen tried to work a kink out of her shoulder while riding the elevator up, but it wasn't helping. She'd gotten pretty banged up during the chaos with the Lizard, and fully expected to be unable to leave her room once she let herself lie down. All the same, she didn't want the news room to see her hurting.

The elevator hit eleven and she settled herself, tugging her jacket straight and resting a hand on her camera bag before the doors dinged open. With Peter and the Clones—new band name—back at her place, she had to hurry. She made a beeline towards the dark room, drawn up short by a gasp.

"Holy shit, Gwen, where have you been?" Gwen wasn't even sure she recognized the person talking to her. Maybe Eddie. Or Tyrone.

"Uh, I've-"

"Jameson!" the man yelled. "Stacy's here."

Jameson's office door slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass, and Jameson himself came stomping down the way towards her, almost glowing red. "Where's my cover photo? It's been forty damn minutes."

Her eyes narrowed as Gwen mentally thought back to when things had started. It had been forty minutes since the fight, but she wasn't sure how they knew that. "I've gotta develop some film. It's from this-"

"We know what it's from, girl. Now hurry!"

"Firstly, it's not girl, it's Ms. Stacy," she snapped back. "Secondly, I'm not on salary, so they're only your photos if you make me a decent offer, otherwise I can walk down the street. Thirdly, what on Earth is everyone so worked up about?"

Betty, always seeming to know what was about to be needed, had already turned a computer screen around and queued up video queued. "Here you go."

Betty pressed play, and fuzzy camera-phone footage showed a badly pixelated Lizard getting kicked by the Black Spider, then spinning about with a vicious tail sweep in reply. As the Lizard finished its spin, a blonde girl with a camera ducked down and took a picture.

Gwen started to shake as memories of that moment rushed back. She'd felt the wind of the Lizard's tail tug at her hair, that was how close she'd come to standing too close. She took a slow breath, trying to steady her nerves. She could have a breakdown when she got home, not a second earlier. The Spiders would be at her home. She could have a breakdown... some other time.

"Got a bit too close," she said, managing to keep her voice calm. "Hard to get any distance in a subway. And I'm late because I ran back to his lair and got pictures from inside, and there were injured people there so I had to make sure help was on-site before I headed back."

"Injured people?" Jameson asked. "They said there were only a few injuries on the train, none serious except maybe the conductor."

"Yeah, like seven people that the Lizard was experimenting on, turning them into Lizards too, I think. It didn't look like it worked the same for them as it did for him. Like I said, experimenting. Look, let me develop my photos and I'll give you something useful to consider buying, alright?"

"You'd better give me something amazing," Jameson yelled as she walked away.

"You'd better pay me twice what you usually do," she called back before stepping into the dark room. Finally alone, she gasped out a breath and started shaking. She closed her eyes and controlled her exhale, slowing it as best she could, until her hands were steady again. A short, condensed little breakdown.

It was little-used, the Bugle dark room. The paper was almost entirely digital, but they still got occasional film in, so they kept it available, even if it was only a closet where it had once been a significant space. Of their regulars, Gwen was the only one that still used film. Fortunately, that meant they weren't used to how quickly she could do things, so nobody noticed when she sat down for a few minutes after getting the film into the chemical baths. She waited for twenty slow breaths, gathering her thoughts, then got moving again.

When she stepped back out, she found Urich waiting.

"Well?" he asked, not needing to tell her what he wanted.

She was ready with her tale and told it quickly, not letting him trip her up when he noted a few of her evasions. It wouldn't do to reveal that she knew who the Spiders were, but that never caused any significant lies.

Halfway through, her timer went off and she went back to the dark room. She skimmed through the shots, quickly trimming out the ones with potential and handing them off to have prints made. She usually insisted on making her own prints, but this wasnt usually. She took a moment to text Peter and Jessica to tell them when she'd arrive, then finished her story.

By the time she was done, the prints were ready, showing exactly what she'd claimed they would, and Jameson agreed to pay double the usual price. A wrecked subway train, the Lizard, and all four spiders was bigger than just big news. It would be the mainpage that afternoon as a partial story, then would hold the mainpage for another day as a full article when Urich was finished, and it would be the cover of the print version in the morning as well, and that was aside from all the syndication they'd get.

Eighth cover. A thrill rushed up her spine at the thought, and she fought to hide it. Eighth cover.

Also, a nice payday in her account. Smiling, she headed back to the apartment, texting Jessica once she was in the alley. At last she was home, only an hour later than she'd told them she would be.

She had hoped they would be sitting civilly about, talking about erudite things and being proper, but she should have known better. These were New Yorkers, after all. Gwen walked into the den to find Peter and a clone—they both had their masks off, but one was in unrelieved red and the other in red-and-black—glaring at each other, and they were the good part. The Black Spider—mask removed, revealing another version of Peter—was wrapped up tight in sticky white webbing, pinning him in a kneeling position and holding his mouth shut.

Gwen gave a pointed look.

"He doesn't play nice," Peter—the one she was assuming to be the original—said.

"He needed a gag?" she asked.

"Yes," the other three replied in unison, relief at his silence evident.

"Well, he's gonna get a chance to talk," she told them.

They paused, then the Scarlet Spider went over to tug the webbing down, mumbling, "Should start to dissolve in another few minutes, anyways."

"By the way," Gwen said, "I'm sorry about that web-bomb thing."

Everyone looked surprised, except for the Scarlet Spider, who replied with, "No, you're not."

"Sure, I'd do it again, but I'm still sorry I had to leave you there."

"I'm sorry I did whatever I did that made you think I wouldn't let you leave."

"I asked to leave," Gwen pointed out, "and you ignored me."

He scowled. "I didn't—" He trailed off with a sigh. "I don't know. Finding out you were alive, having you run like that, the whole day's a blur."

"That's fine." She glanced across them all. "It's not the details that matter, it's the big picture."

"Ah, the big reveal," Peter said, rolling his eyes. "Time to explain why you insisted we all come here."

Gwen gave him a glare. "Man, what got the snark into you today?"

"MJ is expecting me, alright?"

"Yet, here you are, with me." Gwen's own eyes widened in surprise at what she said. She knew even as she heard the words in her head that they were the wrong thing to say, yet still she'd said them.

Peter spun on his heel, stalking towards the kitchen window. "Good luck."

He was leaving, Gwen realized, just walking away. Not that she could really blame him, if she was going to say things like that. She wanted to just let him walk away, pretend he didn't matter, except she still needed him there. Needed them all there. Before he could get away entirely, she just blurted out her big reveal. "There will be more clones, and I know how they're being made, but I need help figuring out where."

Peter paused, one hand on the now-open window. He slid it closed and turned around, but he didn't come back. Instead, he just leaned against the counter alongside the kitchen window, waiting for more.

Jessica stepped between them, catching Gwen's gaze and holding it, staring her down as if she could spot a lie. "Explain that."

"Yes," Peter said, "explain yourself."

The Scarlet and Black spiders kept quiet, but she could feel their eyes boring into her back. "Alright, I'll explain. First, a quick test, to corroborate my theory. You're all scientists, so you know the value."

That drew nods all around. They did all respond remarkably similar to small things like that. Even for Jessica, with her different figure, the nod was noticeably the same gesture.

"So," Gwen said, gesturing around the room, "I need the three of you to tell me about the last two months." She glanced back at the Spider-Man by the window. "I need you to stay quiet." She looked back to the others. "When in the last two months did you save a child's life?"

After a short pause and some confused looks, a babble of stories poured forth. Sometimes, listening like that, it amazed Gwen how many people Peter saved. Every few days, he saved a life. He was good at patrolling, at looking for problems that were about to happen, intervening before they went from dangerous to deadly. Between the three of them, they had eleven stories where they saved the life of a child.

"And you," she said to the probable original, "anything you want to add?"

He rattled off a few stories as well, raising the total from eleven to fifteen.

"As you all can see," Gwen said, "all of your stories fall during the last four weeks were different, but during the month before that they were different. Except for one. That Spider-Man—" she pointed over to the window "—rescued a kid playing soccer. There's a post about it online, dating that event to two weeks after I was presumed dead, and to two weeks before any of you saved anyone I can find clear records of."

"I'm not a fake," the Black Spider snarled. "He's the impostor."

"Please, please let me finish."

He glared at her, opening his mouth to speak.

"Peter, please." She felt cheap, calling him that when she didn't believe it, but he quieted down.

Having silence once more, she began to explain her theory. "Thing is, clones are genetic identicals, which all of you but Jessica likely are. Growing a clone in a few weeks, perhaps someone has that tech, but I have doubts. The memories are trickier, because even if someone had that tech, they wouldn't have a read of Peter's memories to go from. To get clones with perfect memories requires access to the real Spider-Man's memories. There's only one way that happens."

"Drama much?" Jessica said.

"Spill already," Peter put in.

"She thinks it's the symbiote," the Scarlet Spider said, ruining Gwen's moment. She glared at him, and he just shrugged.

"He's right, of course," she continued. "All your memories have a gap between the defeat of the symbiote and your awakening in the city, a three week gap. I know, you remember that, but it's all filled in from various other sources. It's a particular type of confabulation, similar to how some amnesiacs will fill in gaps instinctively, based on what they see around them. They read about what they supposedly did, then their mind puts together a memory where there used to be a gap."

"I think that's what you all did," Gwen explained. "The reason nobody mentioned the boy playing soccer is because it never made the news. No video, no pictures, no interviews, but the kid wrote about it on his blog, and I found it while searching for just such an example to test my theory."

"So what you're saying," Original-Peter said, "is that the symbiote is just sitting somewhere making clones for funsies."

"No, I'm saying it's being used. It has a mind, we know that, or a way to interface with one at the least. It recorded your memories. It can also modify people. Maybe you're not even clones, maybe you're genetically re-written people, I haven't the tools to test that, or even an idea as to how I would do so."

"And that's why I'm female?" Jessica asked.

"I have no idea, but the key here is the symbiote has all the capabilities needed. It can affect matter on a genetic level, and it has your memories to some degree."

Peter still clearly had his doubts. "There's still the question of why, if it's still making clones, we haven't seen any."

"Nobody escapes," the Black Spider said.

"That's my guess," Gwen agreed. "They didn't anticipate how hard you were to hold until these three escaped, but now they have a better facility to contain the new clones. You're just the first three."

"They're the first three," the Black Spider said. "There's another answer, which is we do have those memories. Or didn't you notice that I didn't name the same saves as the others?"

"I, well-"

"Too busy ignoring me?"

Gwen swallowed. "Sorry. Kinda got on a run. Me and my big reveal, right?"

"Truth is, Peter went missing for a week before this guy showed up in his place," the Black Spider said, glaring at Peter.

"I was distraught," Peter snapped. "I just ran, didn't go home. It's not like I was kidnapped."

"Made-up memories," the Black Spider replied.

"No."

"Thing is," the Black Spider continued, "I do have memories from in there. I remember them experimenting on me, remember seeing them experimenting on some of the others. I also remember when there was an alert, when they increased security. That was about a week into things, that was when you escaped."

"I was never imprisoned."

"I remember when I broke out, when I broke the others out, when we all ran and got separated."

"I don't remember that," Jessica said, softly.

"I'm the only one that remembers any of it," the Black Spider said, "because I'm the only one they didn't tamper with. I'm the original, so they wanted my memories intact. The only tests on me were comparative, to make sure the rest of you were good clones. And you were good. So good that I finally got out and found an impostor living my life."

"I'm no impostor!" Possibly-Original-Peter yelled. "I'm-"

"You don't know, though!" the Black Spider screamed back, managing to rip through the softening-webbing and stand up, pointing a finger accusingly. "None of you—"

"Nobody fucking knows!" Gwen yelled. More softly, she said, "But we can find out. We find them, we look at their records, we get the truth. That's what we all want, right?"

The three Peters glared at each other. The Black Spider was the only one to speak. "I'll help you prove this man's a fraud."

* * *

Gwen stared at her computer. It had about a hundred programs running. About. As if she didn't know it was exactly ninety-seven. News searches were only a couple, and only a few others were trolling through some particular forums. Many, many more were doing mass surveillance via Facebook and Facebookalikes. Those were a longshot, but also a potential goldmine.

She'd already made similar programs for tracking villains, and modifying them to better hone in on Spiders was easy. Scanning images for people—mostly faces, but there were some people-detection algorithms—was a well-documented process. Scanning images for structures was also relatively documented, although less pursued—there was a lot more money in facial recognition than wall recognition. Taking those walls and approximating things about their locations was also something she could mostly put together from online sources.

When they were all combined, she could scan for people that were in impossible locations, and she could then run that program over images from a particular two-week period, those two weeks during which the spiders must have escaped.

Mostly, it was false-positives of people standing at windows, but it would also catch people that were flying, leaping between roofs, standing on walls, or just generally being impossible. Tons of computation power, lots of wasted time, but at least a chance of finding photos of the escape.

And it didn't need her monitoring it. She flicked over to some of her drop-sites, which were of course empty. Those were ways for a few people she'd reached out to on the dark net to reach back, and if they reached back inside of a day it wasn't them anyways. They were all far too paranoid for an immediate, unconsidered reply.

Gwen turned from her computer to her phone, which was showing several texts from the Spiders. She could start mapping what they'd sent, except that what they'd sent was useless so far. Still, she could—

Closing her eyes, Gwen forced her mind to clear. She'd never been good at that, and it was proving more and more necessary of late. It took her a long moment to focus herself on what really mattered. The truth was, nothing there needed her. She'd worked late the night before, setting everything in motion, and now she was just procrastinating.

She looked down at her pajamas, which she was still wearing at noon. So much procrastination.

The world wouldn't wait, though. She pulled off the cami and pajama bottoms, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed for the shower. Minutes later, she was dressed and at the window. She glanced out to confirm that nobody was looking, then headed down the fire escape. The seals on the door were still intact, ridiculous as that seemed to her right then. Still, Gwen had a court-date coming up, and until then the door-seal would remain intact, so she went out discreetly.

From the alley, it was down half a block to the subway, and then on to the place she most dreaded: Midtown High. Mr. Flannigan wanted to talk, and then two weeks later, Mr. Flannigan would speak at the emancipation hearing, which meant it mattered quite a bit what he had to say.

Gwen stared up at the blocky, brown-brick construction of a school that had been around since the fifties. Midtown wasn't new, and it didn't look new, but that was the way of schools she supposed. There were fancy new ones, sure, but they weren't where the kids of cops could afford to go.

She glanced around, finding it odd to be standing there, silently, alone. She was used to seeing a swarm of people entering or leaving, but she was used to arriving when the day started and leaving when it ended. Right then, thirty minutes past lunch, the classrooms were full but the grounds were empty. Surprisingly, left alone, it wasn't an ugly structure. Old, yes, but still solid, still serving its purpose, and that mattered. She pulled her camera out of her bag and looked through the lens.

It wasn't much straight-on, so she walked down the way. She sighted past the flag, focusing in on a window. She adjusted the lens until she had a shot through the glass of a young girl with black hair, looking down at her desk, brow furrowed. The flag was an unfocused flapping blur in the foreground, most of the school just out of focus as well, and the room beyond that girl useless as well, but that one girl shone in that moment. Gwen took a picture, another.

She smiled, looking down at the camera. Everyone liked digital because they could check right away, but she knew she'd gotten the shot she wanted. That girl focusing so hard, the real focus of the school right there.

Just procrastination, again. Gwen checked her phone. Seventeen minutes until the meeting. She put the camera away and headed in, made her way to the counselor's office and headed for a seat.

As she sank into the chair, Mr. Flannigan poked his head out of his office. "Gwen? You can come right in."

Gwen swallowed, but nodded and did as she was asked. She'd wanted another moment to gather her thoughts, but that wasn't going to happen, it seemed. Putting on a smile, she walked into his office. The building cast an old-fashioned light over everything, but the office resisted that. No desk to sit across, just some comfortable chairs with a low, round table between them. Mr. Flannigan gestured to one, and once Gwen had sat down he took the chair opposite hers.

"So," she said, "how do you want to do this?"

"I thought we'd talk about some things."

"Such as?"

"Anything you want to talk about."

"Let's be honest," Gwen said, "you want to talk about me going to school again."

He nodded. "Of course I do, I'm a school counselor. But that's not my main concern."

"Really? Why not?" Gwen asked, genuinely surprised.

"You're here. You wouldn't even come if you weren't already thinking about coming back."

"I need your reference for my emancipation."

He smiled. "Maybe."

"My mother's fighting it, and she's married to a family lawyer. Yeah, he's mostly divorce, but child custody and child emancipation are in the same house. And he's good."

"Huh," Mr. Flannigan said, "that wasn't in your records."

"I'm surprised. I thought it covered family in there." Except she wasn't surprised, as she had edited her file several times over the years, just a few tweaks here and there. For example, she had cut out half of everything the middle-school counselor wrote when her parent got divorced, annoyed at the way it made her sound.

"It mentions some things, but I suppose a distant step-father's career wasn't the top concern."

Gwen nodded, as if this were obvious. "So, you want to talk about me coming back to school, right?"

"I want to talk about how you've been risking your life."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "I haven't-"

"We've all seen the video."

Gwen fought off a scowl, managing to keep her face calm. "Yeah, I suppose everyone knows that was me, now that the photos are published, and I'm the only blonde photographer that was down there."

"They're impressive photos. 'Lizard Terrorizes City No More'," he quoted from the Bugle's frontpage. They'd went with one of her first photos, the Lizard lunging from the darkness, massive fangs catching the light, beady eyes gleaming. It had really come out well. "You've got something of a career started."

"Something of a career? I've had eight cover photos."

"I'm impressed, really I am. But I'm not worried about the photos, I'm worried about how you get them."

"With a camera?" she suggested.

"At risk to your life," he supplied.

"Mr. Flannigan, this is a career. I am working at a major paper, with photographs that are seen nationwide, sometimes worldwide, and you're telling me to back down."

"The way you're talking, it's as if you aren't aware of the danger," he said. "I know it's cliche, but there's truth to cliche: young people think they're immoral. You're not immortal."

What if I am? Gwen thought, almost saying the words. Gwen licked her lips, wondering just how far she had to go to win him over. On the one hand, she really did need his recommendation. On the other hand, she didn't like sharing secrets. "I know what was signed when I went to school. I know that it was my father signing me up, but I read it all the same. You're a counselor, and a licensed social worker. This is a privileged conversation."

"Yes, Gwen. Nothing you say here will be revealed to anyone, not ever."

"There's more to it than that." Gwen thought a moment, the decided to go for it. All in, or not in at all. "You can't get me in trouble for a past crime, either, only for a planned one."

He looked ready to speak, but restrained himself. Probably thought it was best to just let her keep talking, which was the right response, since she was about to tell him important things. She had to convince him, after all.

"Mr. Flannigan, if you open up my file that you have right there, you'll find that my middle-school counselor said I was 'friendly' and 'precocious' but had begun to 'develop a rebellious streak'. That's on lines seven and nine of her second paragraph."

Mr. Flannigan glanced at the closed file, but didn't open it. "I remember that. But then again, I'm allowed to read these files."

"And I'm able to read them," Gwen replied. "Thing is, privileged is one thing, actually secret is another. Can you agree to not take notes for a minute, to not write something down, and not just right now, but not write it down after I'm gone, not when you're thinking back, not ever again? Because for some things, secret is what matters, not simply privileged."

He rested a hand on the file and looked down at it, actually giving thought to what she was saying. Slowly, he set the pen down, and looked back up at Gwen. "I can. Whatever it is you want to talk about, I'm here to help."

"It's not something you can much help with," she said. "It's important, though. It's the only way you'll understand. Think back to that photograph, the one they published 'posthumously'. Got that in your mind?"

He smiled, somewhat sadly. "Trust me, that photograph was near to the thoughts of everyone in this school for quite a while."

"Now, do you know what the numbers 84.3 or 90.8 mean, or perhaps 39600, 198000, or 44512?"

He laughed softly. "I do not."

"From where I fell to the waterline is 84.3 meters, which means I should have hit the water going 90.8 miles per hour, which results in 39600 joules of energy and an approximate water impact, due to falling flat, not diving, of 198000 newtons. In a term you're probably more familiar with, that's 44512 pound-force units. Now do you know what those numbers mean?"

"They don't mean good things," Mr. Flannigan said. His voice was soft, and his eyes were tight, having difficulty meeting hers directly.

"They don't mean good things," Gwen agreed. "They mean I should be dead. Ninety miles per hour. That's fatal."

Gwen waved a finger around, as if to take in the little room around them. "Yet here we sit. I'm alive, well even. Which means I didn't die, and it means there's a reason I didn't die. I not only didn't die, I was almost uninjured. No broken ribs, no spinal damage, just me, basically fine. Every few months, there's a news story about some kid discovering strange, incredible powers. Sometimes, they do something fun, like cool light shows. Sometimes, the kid becomes a hero, and suddenly Spidey has three new competitors. Sometimes, the kid goes off like a bomb, and levels an apartment building."

"You're not a bomb, Gwen."

"It's a nice sentiment, but do you know that?"

"If you were—"

"There are energy absorption anomalies. Maybe my body can absorb kinetic energy in emergencies, but I never noticed because I never got hit in a dangerous way. Now, I'm building up spare kinetic energy, until it overloads and explodes. You say impossible, I say one of not all that many possibilities for how I survived."

"I understand the fear," Mr. Flannigan said. "It's reasonable, smart even, to be afraid of something like that. But that doesn't mean you have to go into the fight with the costumed heroes, just because you might have a power."

"I'm not fighting, I'm looking. I'm looking really hard, because the black stuff all over Spider-Man in that photo was a creature called a symbiote, and it had the ability to save my life in much the same way that my life was actually saved. The only way to prove that it did or did not do so is to find it. The press says it turned into an evil black beast—which they promptly dubbed Venom—and Spider-Man killed it. Thing is, I'm good at finding super-villains. It's what I do. And I have proof that this Venom is not dead."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying it's out there, and if I find it I can determine whether or not that's why I'm alive. You see me on that video, you think I'm risking my life. Truth is, I'm trying to make sure I know enough to stay alive. Would it be great if I could just go to class and relax like everyone else?" Gwen shrugged. "Sure, that'd be fine. But it's not my life, not now. Not since I hit the water at ninety miles per hour and didn't get hurt."

He looked at her a long moment. "I won't write any of that down."

"I know," Gwen said, and she did. It was written on his face that he understood how much it cost her to even speak about it aloud. "I also think you understand that, however it may look to the world at large, my risks out there aren't some irresponsible madness of youth. I think you understand quite well why I do what I do."

"Perhaps I do," he said. "But you just said all that you get a recommendation, right?"

Gwen smiled softly. "You're perceptive, Mr. Flannigan. Yes, I was willing to say that to get a recommendation."

"Fine. I think we can reach a reasonable compromise."

"Cutting a deal? I thought this was an unbiased recommendation, based on your insight into my character."

He smiled. "No you didn't."

Gwen opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again and shrugged. "What's the deal?"

"Well, you need some time to settle yourself, but you also need an education. In addition to an education, I feel that you have some issues to work through. Here's my suggestion: Firstly, agree to monthly sessions with me, this being the first. Secondly, agree to come back to school when you're ready.

"The spring semester starts in seven weeks," he continued, "and the exams for fall semester are in six weeks. If you arrange with your teachers to come back to school after the winter vacation, to take your exams and pass this semester's classes, and then come back to school next semester, well you will have demonstrated how a responsible adult deals with a difficult time in her life. If you just cut and run, leaving school behind forever, you will have demonstrated something quite different."

Gwen thought it through, but it was mostly just thinking in circles. If he spoke on her mother's side, Gwen wouldn't get her emancipation, and she needed that emancipation. "I can do that."

"Get a note from every teacher, agreeing to let you get a fair grade based on your grades at the start of the year and your exam results, and show me those, and you'll get the best recommendation you've ever imagined."

"I'd better," Gwen replied.

He nodded and wrote up an explanation for the teachers she would need to talk to, then sent her on her way. Gwen went through the school, finding teachers in their offices whenever possible, or between classes, and got their signatures. That was the easy part.

Walking down the hall during the breaks, catching stares from everyone there, hearing the whispers that were just too quiet to be understood, that was the hard part. That was the part that cut right into her.

Not enough to stop her, though. Yeah, coming back would suck. She'd be famous, of a sudden. A little local celebrity at PS 208. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up on the wrong end of a lens, the worst of all possible worlds. Even that day, just walking down the hall, she had to keep her head down and her hood up to hide from the cell-phones making videos of her.

It probably seemed like some amazing bit of hypocrisy for a photojournalist to hate being photographed, but it was more visceral than conscious for Gwen. According to her father, she'd been a photographer since he tried to take a picture of her when she was five, and she'd told him no and taken the camera away.

"No, I take the pictures," she said, and proceeded to try to do so. A photo album still had a big red smear of her thumb with a little bit of green on the edge where some grass had gotten in frame, her first photo ever.

Gwen bit her lip, insisting she wouldn't tear up. She hadn't thought of that for years. It had been her father's favorite story. Little Gwennie, so stubborn about the photographs. And after that, she'd always insisted. No more photos. He'd try to sneak them in, try to catch her off-guard, but she kept an eye on that camera. Aside from a pair of school photos before she got to high-school, there were no more photos of her. She was the one behind the camera. That was how the world was supposed to work.

Gwen diverted to her locker, thinking she could pretend to open it and hide, then realized they'd have removed her lock and emptied her locker when she died. Stopping, Gwen came face-to-face with a plastering of brightly colored cards. Her locker was plastered over with notes from other students, mourning her passing.

"Not many people get to see their own memorial," said Peter, startling her.

Gwen glanced at him, then back to the locker. The lockers on either side had some spillover, but most of it just crept up above the lockers, reaching towards the ceiling. "I didn't think there'd be so many."

"Of course there were."

"Do you think anyone will mind if I tear it all down?" Gwen asked.

"Isn't it nice, knowing so many people care?" asked another person. Gwen glanced aside, seeing MJ standing there. The redhead slipped a hand onto Peter's arm, making her position clear.

"It's awkward," Gwen said. "It's awkward being reminded that you almost died, and reminding everyone else of it too. Some night, it'll all just disappear. Nobody has to know it was me."

"It's your locker," MJ said. "Do whatever you want."

MJ turned to go and Peter didn't try to slow her. He glanced back and said, "See you around, Gwen."

Gwen smiled after him, although it faded as MJ rested her head on Peter's shoulder. The bell rang and the hall cleared out, and suddenly Gwen was alone once more. One more teacher to get a signature from, for debate. God, finals for debate were a debate, and everyone else would have months of time to prep, but she'd not get any class time. The question-answer tests like AP physics were easy to study for, the essays like she had for expository composition were something she could do anytime, but debate needed prep. It needed someone to bounce ideas off, and it needed time, and she was busy.

Gwen checked her phone, finding seven messages from the Bugle, even though she'd told them she would be busy today. Still, whether she did well or not, debate would be fine. It was just one class

Gwen headed onward, tying up that final loose end before heading home.


	8. Teamwork

Gwen checked the dark-net drop-boxes again. Day one, she had expected no replies. Day two, there should have been something. These people were cautious, but they were also curious. Still, it was early. She made her way to the shower and started rinsing herself off, thoughts wandering as she held her head under almost-too-hot water.

Her thoughts wandered right back to where they'd been staying for days: What if the Black Spider was right about everything? What if the symbiote was gone? She needed to find that symbiote, she needed it to be the source of this problem, because otherwise she had no leads to figure out how she survived.

The Black Spider was definitely right about one thing: None of them knew. They couldn't. They were all just making guesses.

Well, they knew some things. The Scarlet Spider had decided that he knew, and he'd followed Jessica's lead. Ben Reilly, he was going by. He said the new name helped, gave him clarity where there had been doubt. She'd touched base with some contacts and gotten his paperwork started. Soon, he'd be in the system, a real person with a real life and a real past, and then she'd get his official documentation and he'd be able to live like a normal person. Well, a normal super-hero.

Jessica, Ben, Peter, and Peter. Those last two wouldn't budge. They were too certain, had too much invested in being right. Gwen wanted to believe that her Peter had stayed safe and happy. Twisted as it was, she wanted to believe that her Peter was the one that moved on with his life, got a new girlfriend, and left her behind. What she really wanted to believe was that he'd kept his quick wit and high spirits, that he'd kept his moral compass.

The truth might be otherwise, though. Perhaps he had been broken. Three weeks of experimentation, of torture, had stripped away any vestiges of joy that Black-Spider Peter might have once claimed. Of all of them, he seemed the oldest, the hardest, the most callous.

If that was the case, if that was the Peter she'd left behind, she should go to him, try to help him. Her boyfriend, broken and alone, and she was hiding from him because she liked the version without those scars.

She stared at the blank white tile, just letting the water wash over her. In the shower, with nothing to anchor her, no bright electronic screens to distract her, Gwen's thoughts raced in circles, faster and faster, never finding a place to rest. She hurried up, toweled off, and headed back to her room. The distractions were preferable to her thoughts, right then. Pulling on yoga pants and a T-shirt, she sat in front of the screen again.

Still nothing new.

She resisted the urge to go back to the message boards. Pestering people again would look needy, and it was never good to look needy, especially when you were. Thoughts circling back to the Black Spider, Gwen loaded up the photos of the fight with the Lizard. He'd attacked the others, but how had that started? They hadn't been forthcoming, but she'd pieced bits together.

The first fight had been when he attacked the man who was living his life, and even that started with an argument. Gwen tried to imagine coming home and finding someone else in her bedroom, dating her boyfriend, wearing her clothes. Heck, she'd almost slapped MJ, and that wasn't for half as much. Maybe fighting the others had just grown from that one moment, just a series of misunderstandings and disagreements, filtered through some twisted lens of violence.

Maybe he was a clone, but even then he was a broken man, and her the only one he'd trust.

She pushed away from her computer, rolling her chair across the room, flopping out of it and into her bed. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Things weren't supposed to be this hard. She'd gotten her life back, gone through all the needed steps. She already had pay from the Bugle when she had photos, a goodly check from the Lizard shots, plus back-pay for that posthumous one. She would win the lawsuit, get the apartment, get the survivor's pension her father had earned when he died.

She teared up and pushed back memories of her father. Those still hurt too much to dwell on.

Despite everything she'd lost, Gwen had gotten things together like she'd always gotten things together. Except nothing was together. She had nightmares about falling off a bridge, she wasn't sure whether her boyfriend had found a new girlfriend or been tortured until he wasn't the man she knew, and there was nothing she could do about any of it. She didn't even know why she was alive.

The tears started despite her efforts to push them back. Disgustingly enough, it was Peter—both of the Peters—that nagged at her the most. She didn't even get to be angry at them. Peter hadn't dumped her and run off with another girl, he'd moved on with his life like a responsible adult. Maybe he'd been a little too quick, maybe she could be a little spiteful about that.

Other-Peter hadn't changed willingly, he'd been tormented until he broke, and she couldn't blame him for that. Well, he was kinda mean to all the other Peters. She could be annoyed about that.

What did it qualify as to think about going out with your ex-boyfriend's clone? Just a bad idea?

For an instant, she had an urge to walk into Jessica's room and whine about it. A little girl-talk with her ex-boy friend, because she had to distinguish between that and her ex-boyfriend. Except she couldn't even have a talk like that with Jessica, because no matter what the girl said about her preferences, she still gave Gwen all the same looks that Peter had.

She finally gave up entirely, turned on music to mask the noise, and just let herself cry. For a good hour, she cried it out, bemoaning her situation and doing nothing to improve it.

The tears passed, washed away her feelings and strength in equal measure. At least the pain faded as the tears dried, bringing calm to her mind.

As the calm settled in, Gwen decided that it was time. Time to change things, to make up her mind about things. She did up her face so there'd be no tear tracks, then went to check on Jessica.

A knock on the door drew mumbling, followed by a disheveled Jessica opening the door and glaring. It was eight in the afternoon, and Jessica had just woken up.

"Well, you still have those wonderful Parker sleep-habits," Gwen announced.

"Remember that I can break you in half," Jessica grumbled.

"It's getting dark," Gwen said in reply. She held up a cheap digital camera. "Take pictures of anything that seems familiar, especially if you can't recall why it's familiar. It might be in the buried memories of your escape."

Jessica finally managed a smile, wakefulness arriving properly, and stepped in for the camera. She froze, face inches form Gwen's. Gently taking the camera, she swallowed and stepped back. "I'll be going."

Same looks, same instincts, Gwen thought as she watched Jessica hop out the window and flee. Same patterns, which meant she'd be gone for hours.

Gwen texted Peter, the Black-Spider Peter: Come by so we can talk before you head out.

Ten minutes later he was climbing in through her window. She glared at him, stopping him halfway in. "Knock, maybe?"

He sat on the window sill and pulled off his mask. "Sorry."

There was a hardness to his face, three weeks of torment weathering the skin more than three years of sun would have, but it was still the same face, the same soft brown hair. She sighed, then spun her chair around properly and leaned back. She gestured at the bed.

He got a half-smile, then controlled himself. "You just want to talk, then?"

She patted the bed. "Sit down."

He walked over to the bed and sat down. "What did you want to talk about?"

Gwen took a moment to reply, wanting to say things properly. "You know, I don't know who's who, right?"

"You seemed pretty sure before."

"And you convinced me otherwise. You both act different than the man I remember because you are different. And that left me thinking that maybe it's not too important."

He smiled again, hearing those words.

"The truth is," she continued, "none of us are together now. Whoever's the real Peter Parker, I've not gone on a date with him for two months."

"That's not so long," he said.

"It's a third as long as I dated him, or you if you're him. This is really awkward to talk about, by the way. Even aside from the subject, just the words tangle themselves up."

"Just call me Peter," he said, "and call him history."

She chuckled. "Nice try. Seriously, though, we were friends far longer than that. So the way I see it, right now, we're friends. You and me. Me and him. Me and Ben. Me and Jessica. You're all friends of mine."

"Friends," he said, as if it were a cruel barb, and perhaps it was to him.

"We were friends before, and that's fine," Gwen said. "We're going to get through this, figure out what's going on, and then we'll still be friends and we'll go from there. Whether you're a clone or not, we're still friends, you see?"

"I see." He looked out the window. "I suppose you want me to get looking, then?"

"Not yet."

He turned back to her, that glimmer of hope back in his eyes.

"Peter," she said, "I need to know that you're alright."

"That I'm alright?"

"You're different. I'm worried that the torture you suffered, those men cutting on you, I'm worried you never recovered from it."

"Cutting? That wasn't the torture. The torture was watching you fall. The torture was being in a cage with nothing to keep me company but the memory of that moment. That was the torture." Suddenly earnest, he slid from the bed, going to his knees, his hands on the arms of her chair. "Don't you see, that's how I know, for certain, that I'm not just a clone. The others, they just moved on, as if you were nothing. If they had really been together like we were, they couldn't do that, they couldn't just leave you."

Gwen was going to push him away, but her hand settled on his and just stopped there. Peter's hands, the same as ever. And Peter's earnest nature shining through, same as ever.

"I was broken, Gwen. I knew that I killed you, and it broke me. But you're here, you're with me, and every second we're here together, every word from your lips, every touch, it puts me back together."

He gripped her hand, and she didn't pull away. He rose slightly, coming closer to her, and she let him.

Softly, he said, "Every kiss-" he leaned in and kissed her, softly. It wasn't a quick peck, but he didn't linger either, didn't try to push her into anything more. "Every kiss heals me."

He leaned in again, but stopped short of kissing her, his breath hot on her lips. She held herself back, but only for a moment. He was still Peter, in that moment, and he wanted her, and that was more than enough. She leaned that last inch and kissed him, and in a blink he'd lifted her from the chair and pulled her close, as if he couldn't bear to have an inch of his body not up against hers, and she saw no reason to push him away.

* * *

Lying beside him on the bed, she stared at the ceiling, which had seen some use during the last hour. It was fun dating Spider Man.

"So, we're back together?" he asked.

Her heart stuttered, from nerves not from joy. She struggled to find her voice. "It's like I said, we're friends. Let's figure out what else is going on. We can go from there."

"Gwen, I don't care what's going on. I only care about being here with you."

"I care."

"But—"

"The symbiote might be there," she said.

"In a cage," he said.

"They're making more clones, experimenting on them, killing them."

He looked away from her, joining her in staring at the ceiling. "I'll go. I'll figure out where I exited when I finished fleeing that place. For you."

"Thank you," she said, but in her mind those last words echoed. For her. So different than he had been. Peter had never been a hero for her, he'd been a hero because it was the right thing to do.

The thought that he was the imitation, not the original, floated back to the surface of her mind, and efforts to banish it failed. For her. Not for the clones, not for the sake of people who were suffering, simply for her.

She stayed in the bed, watching him slide back into his sleek, black costume, waiting until he was gone to get up and make her way to the shower. Once she was rinsed, Gwen wrapped herself in a towel and opened the door.

Shrieking, she had to scramble to keep the towel up. Leaning against the wall in the hallway, Jessica smirked at her. "So it's the black one. First pick already taken?"

Gwen turned bright red. "I, uh-"

"Do we all get a go? Me next, or Ben?"

The blush darkened, turning from shame to anger. "You know what? Fuck you. What right do you have to come in here and give me shit?"

"I'm your b—" Jessica's eyes widened as she cut herself off mid-word. "God, I'm sorry. It's all tangled up in my head. I'd meant to just call you out a bit, warn you to be careful, to make sure the guys don't notice, but instead I just lost it, same as I thought the guys would. They would, though. Lose it."

Gwen decided to let it slide. She'd dealt with enough that day to not want another fight. "You know, I never pictured Peter as the jealous type."

"Everyone's the jealous type with a girl like you."

"I'm not sure if that's a compliment."

"It's a compliment," Jessica said.

"You already done taking pictures of what you could remember?" Gwen asked, knowing there hadn't been enough time for that.

"Sorry. I saw him swinging this way and followed him."

"One job, Jessica. The world think's you're not a person and you don't go to school or work. You LITERALLY have one job."

Jessica chuckled. "What, harassing you doesn't count?"

"Just get back out there," Gwen said.

Jessica kept laughing as she went back out the window, and then Gwen was free to go back to her room and get dressed. She pulled on a new T-shirt and some jeans, then settled down at her computer to work.

The Black Spider said he would find where he'd come out, and he sounded confident about it. His story was that he'd gotten into the sewers and washed out somewhere across the river from Jersey. Once she knew where, Gwen would need to map it all out, and that meant maps of the sewer tunnels.

She searched a bit, then gave up. The maps online weren't very good, neither up-to-date nor extensive. It was too late for the official records, in paper copy downtown, which meant either hacking into the waste disposal department's system or waiting a day. Hacking it would be a lovely challenge, but she didn't like playing too loose with her lawbreaking.

Instead, Gwen went back to her mapping program. It wasn't designed to include sewers. She'd hacked on a bit to add subways when tracking the lizard, but adding an entire sewer system would mess it all up.

It was time to extend the program. That would be a good project for a while, not that anyone else would recognize her work.

Nobody appreciated how hard it was to accurately map something out. No, Peter just saw the green lines and blips on his phone and said, 'Why isn't it all fancy colors like Google Maps?' She'd added the fancy colors like Google Maps to shut him up, but it didn't include layers, so she couldn't add a sewer layer.

She paused. If she did it right, she could eventually add power grids and the like to that same map without adding them as an ugly hack as she had previously. Locations of events, villain lairs, police scanner results. A lot of things she didn't handle properly, but that could all fit under a few well-defined categories. Definitely best to do it right.

She fell into the work, quickly modifying the software. She took a break, done but needing to go through and recheck the code, and realized it was two AM. She always lost track of time while programming. It used to be, if she lost track of time too badly, she had to go to school on little sleep. It was nice to not have to wake up for school the next day. It wasn't so nice that her father hadn't yelled at her to go to bed.

Gwen blinked back tears and found that they didn't flood out at that momentary thought. Perhaps she'd cried enough that morning for any one day. Yawning and stretching, Gwen turned around.

She yelped and almost toppled her chair. Jessica was sitting on the window sill. "How long have you been there?"

"About forty minutes," Jessica said. She held up her phone, showing lines of text. "Started reading."

"Don't just come into my room like that."

Jessica held up the digital camera. "Your pictures. Ben said he wanted to give you his himself. I can't imagine why he wants to come by in person."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Just gimme the camera and go away."

Jessica jumped down and walked through the room, setting the camera on the corner of Gwen's desk. "Don't get started right now. You're gonna need your rest for when Ben comes by."

"Fuck you," Gwen said, throwing a pillow that Jessica caught.

The door closed over Jessica's laughter, and Gwen walked over and snatched her pillow back up, then walked to her bed. Jessica was right, in a way. They both knew why Ben wanted to deliver his camera in person. Everyone knew.

She flopped into bed, burying her face in the pillow. God, if everyone knew, would she develop a reputation? More to the point, did she care? Gwen found that she might care later, but right then she was too tired for it. As soon as she turned off the lights, she fell straight asleep.

* * *

As expected, the Black Spider gave the best information. He escaped by diving into a large drain, washed through several sewer tunnels into a major basin, then further down until he caught a wall and climbed free right before the channel deposited into a water treatment plant across the river from New Jersey. He thought that, with the specific water treatment plant identified, his story would make things easy, but he didn't appreciate how massive the sewer system was.

Still, once she knew that outlet, once she knew where he drained towards, Gwen was able to narrow the possible basins he'd fallen into down to four major basins. From there, she had sixty city blocks that might have held the facility, and that was something to work with. That was more than just something, in fact. That was a lot.

On those sixty blocks, she compared archival data from the power grid, looking back years, trying to find a facility that drew enough to be a secret lab of some sort. That was one angle, and not a great one. They could have generators, and they might have a facility with power draw that matched what its official cover would generate, but it was still one angle to check.

The next angle was size. The space had to be large, since the Black Spider claimed they had all been in cells along the walls of a single chamber, and that there had been quite a lot of cells. One large chamber was not an entirely common occurrence. Still, a lot of possibilities.

Then there was the public face. These buildings were corporate-owned, and that meant they had public relations, web pages, offices. If it was being run by an organization—Gwen thought it was—the public face would probably be well made. But there would be some oddities. They wouldn't offer tours, or encourage contact of any sort. Most companies, given a call, were glad to have someone come by. It was a chance to show off, a chance to advertise, develop a reputation. But even many genuine organizations didn't care for contact at every random location.

If their front was a consumer-level business, she checked review sites, trying to find out if people had actually used their services. That cut away a few more possibilities.

There was zoning data too, but zoning in New York was a tangle. It was easy to find out what one exact location was zoned as. Repeating that for a few thousand locations became tedious, and it would most likely be properly zoned, anyways. Still, it gave something to compare the other possibilities to, another way to spot irregularities.

Even together, all five methods Gwen could work gave minimal hope. That was the game, though. A few thousand slim leads and a whole lot of work was how it was done. She pulled street-view images of every location that seemed plausible, she called secretaries and front desks and automated machines that talked in circles for hours on end. She download brochures, skimmed through web-sites, and did everything she could to trim down the possibilities.

That was tedious, and the Spiders weren't patient. They didn't seem to get that she couldn't just write a program to automate the process. Well, they understood, they just nagged about it. So she threw them out. Her exact words were, "Go away and be heroes somewhere. I'm busy."

Inevitably, knowing that she would be alone all day, they found reasons to come by. Ben took a break in his patrolling for bad guys to say hi and offer her some coffee and lunch, hand-delivered right to her window. While they ate, he broke down one of his new web-shooters, demonstrated the way the new grip made it easier to fire various different configurations of webbing.

It was obvious where he wanted to be going with things, being as he maneuvered the conversation so they were both sitting cross-legged on her bed with the web-shooter between them. There are very few reasons to have a conversation on a bed, and explaining mechanical engineering is not one of them.

She probably should have pushed him off early, being as she knew it was going nowhere, but it was nice to be around him. A lot like the Peter she remembered, but not quite as thoughtful, not quite as expressive. She didn't let it go further than talking, and he didn't seem surprised.

It was almost like giving it a shot was his obligation. The next time he visited, Ben just leaned on the wall and distracted Gwen with talk about all the latest new from the science world. He read even more scientific journals than the Peter she remembered had, although he still had the same favorites: Stark, Octavius, and Pym. That was all, though. Just talk. It had to be lonely, having your entire life stolen away, so she didn't blame him for coming by.

Black-Spider Peter was almost as restrained. It was clear what he wanted, clear that he wanted it, but he didn't press, he just came by and talked. At first, as he rambled on about every little thing, it seemed weird. More than the others, he was suffering from all that he'd lost. Other-Peter still lived his life, lived as if he'd lost little at all. Jessica and Ben had chosen new names, made the break and started moving on, but Black-Spider Peter couldn't move on.

Every part of his life was gone but for Gwen, and so he spilled out his every worry to her, when she would let him. For an hour they talked, and he would have talked more if she hadn't told him he had to leave. He just smiled and went along with it, turning to the window, mask in hand. Seeing him standing there, staring out at nothing, bracing himself for the world, it broke Gwen's heart.

She touched his shoulder, smiled at him, and gave him a quick kiss goodbye, just to see that face get a smile back. Of course, they were terrible at that whole 'quick kiss goodbye' thing. Thirty minutes later, lying there together, they stared at the ceiling.

"I have nightmares," he said out of nowhere.

She looked at him. "Nightmares?"

"I see you falling," he said. "I see you falling, slower and slower with every passing second. It's hours to the waves, but its weeks as you hit the water. All that time, an eternity for me to struggle, and I can't reach you. I can't ever save you."

"I'm here, though," Gwen said, setting a hand on his chest.

"I know, but I still have the nightmares."

"I have nightmares, too," Gwen confided. She hadn't told any of the others that.

"You do?"

"The exact same thing. I'm falling, and I'm looking up, watching that strand of webbing arc down towards me. I try to reach for it, but I can't seem to grab it, and then I wake up in a cold sweat."

He pulled her close, touching his lips to her hair. "You're here, though."

Gwen smiled. "I still have the nightmares. It's okay, though. They're only nightmares."

"Only nightmares," he agreed, pulling her closer.

They fell asleep like that, waking up feeling stiff and crusty almost an hour later. Gwen dragged herself away from him and Black-Spider Peter climbed out of bed across from her.

"I really have to work," she said, knowing it sounded like she was throwing him out.

"I know," he agreed, and this time he actually left.

Gwen sat there a while, wondering if she was just throwing him out, or if she really did have to work. She glanced at the clock, and realized that, yes, she did have to work. She also had to shower and get dressed again, or Jessica would come home while Gwen was still half-naked.

She took a quick shower, rushed back to her computer, and fell into the work. That was the way days went. As the days turned rolled on, she gave up on the contact she'd been hoping for. She'd gotten in touch with a dozen other groups, all conspiracy nuts on the dark web that did pretty good work, but that wasn't enough. They watched the agencies and corporations, but only with mixed accuracy, and she needed more than mixed.

All that meant doing it herself, which was something Gwen was familiar with. Well, not quite by herself. She did have four spiders she could send out on errands. Three and a half. OG-Peter, as she'd begun thinking of him, wasn't around much.

He was the only one that didn't come by, didn't try to flirt with her. He had school. He studied, went on dates, and heroed around the city, and he only stopped by for a minute or two each night.

If he sometimes didn't show at all, it might have seemed more friendly, but instead it was like she was just a part of his job, just one stop on his route. Not that he had a route. He never had a route. He just went swinging around the city, keeping an eye out, trying to make things better.

The clones, the return of his supposedly-dead-girlfriend, the thought that there was still some laboratory out there making more clones of him, none of that seemed to get to him. He didn't ignore it. He looked at her awkwardly, not sure how to handle talking to an ex-girlfriend. He searched for the laboratory they cooked up clones in while he was out. He just didn't throw his life over for it.

Maybe he realized, despite her efforts to hide it, that she was with Black-Spider Peter, she mused. Maybe that had driven him away. She didn't know, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to know. It didn't seem likely that anything good would come of trying to rekindle her romance with a man that had already moved on to another woman.

Not that Gwen didn't dig up dirt on MJ a couple times and consider smearing her quite publicly on Facebook. But Gwen kept her control, deleted those files, and went back to work.

Work wasn't just searching, either, not that she told them all the details about her problems. She had to go into the Bugle what seemed like a dozen times, always to meet with lawyers about some nonsense from Curt Connors' sister. Gwen had insisted he was the Lizard, her claim had gotten published, and now they doubted her evidence. Being a supervillain, he was locked away on the RAFT, and SHIELD being SHIELD, they wouldn't say word-one about whether he was the Lizard or not.

According to Betty, getting her first libel charge was a sign that Gwen was a real journalist. She felt more like an undeserving victim, being as she was the one that had risked her neck getting those photos, but that was life.

On the whole, she was kept enormously busy, but at least she felt like she was making progress. On day six, Gwen narrowed the list to fifty prospects, and then she sent Jessica and Ben out with cheap webcams to plant strategically, and she started monitoring them all.

Mostly, it was an automated search, although it took her a bit to get it to reliably note whenever someone entered, left, or stood around in front of the building. Once that worked, she just checked the results. A couple hours of that each day, a whole lot of nothing, and the continuing drama of dealing with three clones of her ex-boyfriend.

Ben came by to talk regularly, and Black-Spider Peter was almost a nuisance with how much he came by, but Jessica played it cool. She would sit down for a bit at the end of the day, after she was done patrolling and searching, bring in some sort of take-out, and eat a quick meal. They talked a bit, then Jessica headed to her room and went to bed, and that was that.

Until the evening of day seven. Jessica knocked, stepped inside when Gwen told her to come in. That was typical, as Jessica never used the window. The others could have come in through the kitchen and knocked as well, but they didn't. The difference was that, instead of pajamas or sweats as were typical, Jessica had shoes on and wore jeans and a tank-top, a jacket hanging loosely in her hand.

"We both need a break," Jessica announced, as if stating the most obvious thing in the world. "We're getting dinner."

Gwen blinked, trying to change her focus from text on a computer screen to what Jessica had just said. Food. Of course. Gwen shrugged and stood, walking towards the door.

"No," Jessica said, looking pointedly at the yoga-pants and over-large T-shirt Gwen was wearing, "not some reheated Chinese food from Tuesday, we're going and eating at a restaurant."

"You know, I didn't think you'd be the one to ask me on a date."

"It's not a date, it's a girls' night out." Jessica frowned, looking down at her hands as if surprised to see them. "I considered suggesting a spa, but I honestly don't know what that entails. Will people expect me to know, now that I'm a girl?"

Gwen laughed. "People expect a lot of things, but you should never sink to their expectations. And, fine, I'll take a break and get something to eat."

"So, I've never done one of these," Jessica said, "but I was figuring that we could use those fake IDs you made to sneak into a bar and flirt with guys that are too old for us, then just go from there. I'm not actually sure if those sorts of bars have decent food, so we might have to wing it for that bit."

"Sounds like a great plan," Gwen said.

It was a fine plan, and it went great, mostly. They found a karaoke bar, and the food wasn't particularly good. They ate it anyway, and didn't say no when some guys bought them beers. The beer was worse than the food, but they drank it anyways. After they shooed the guys away, Gwen harassed Jessica into singing Spiderwebs, which nobody had any reason to find funny. Jessica retaliated by signing Gwen up to sing Bitch, perhaps just to hear Gwen admit that she was in fact a bitch.

The parts of the night were great, and the whole night should have been great, but there was one key problem: Jessica's mask. Out of costume, Jessica was always wearing a mask. In the tights, she was just a Spider, just a hero. That was obviously easy for her. Sitting at a table with a friend, living in her own skin, that was where the mask gave her trouble. Every once in a while, the mask that was Jessica, that hid the fact that she had been Peter, would slip away.

She would get this intent look in her eyes, like she couldn't take her eyes off of Gwen. She would stand a touch to close, then realize it and shift away. She would bite at her lip, she would lean to manage to brush against Gwen, she would blush and look away when nothing embarrassing had been said. Once, while they were sitting beside each other, she absent-mindedly rested an arm on Gwen's shoulders and the night turned permanently awkward.

Gwen wondered if Jessica actually believed it when she said that she only wanted to be friends. Gwen didn't bring it up, though. Some things were better left unsaid. With the unsaid nestled between them, the web-swinging home was tense, and upstairs they each went silently to their own rooms.

Gwen found herself just staring at the screen blankly for a while, considering just getting more sleep. There was too much on her mind, and too much to do, so she decided to keep at it.

She went back to the beginning, started reviewing everything for a third time. As ever, time slipped away, until she found her eyes feeling stiff from reading so long, and light returned to the sky. She didn't go to bed, though. She reviewed the same video clips again.

And she found something. Not worrying about exhaustion, Gwen headed out and kept right on working.

That afternoon, she summoned the Spiders together to give them the good news.

"See that," Gwen said, replaying the set of seven clips.

"See what?" Ben asked. "Random people coming and going?"

"Not random," she said. "One repeats each time."

"And?"

"And when someone is odd, you find out who he is."

They looked stunned, but OG-Peter just chuckled. "Man, if only I knew someone who was good at figuring that stuff out."

"Thank you for asking so politely," she told him, "and yes I did go to all the trouble of finding out for you. He's a realtor named Conroy Calvin."

"A realtor?"

"Yes. As in, the property is for sale."

"A realtor in front of a for-sale property," Jessica drawled. "What is the world coming to?"

"Problem is," Gwen explained, "the timing of that doesn't sync up properly. Real businesses don't go from being operational to being for sale in a matter of moments, especially with nobody in the area commenting on it."

"How do you know nobody commented?" Jessica asked.

"Because once I got suspicious I checked out the area in person, then dug into everyone who clearly was there semi-permanently. There's a girl at a coffee shop on the corner who blogs about literally everything. She posts about five times a day, with a quick note if there's something minor, and with pages of writing if it's something big. Not a peep about them shuttering their business, but she did note that a few of the regulars hadn't been around. There and then gone, not a word of warning."

"So we've got them?"

"Well..." Gwen said, dragging out the word, "not yet. They wiped all the records."

"So we've found out we can't find them," Black-Spider Peter said, a hint of anger tinging his words, as it so often did. He was dealing with the delay worse than the others.

Gwen rolled her eyes, then pointed at herself. "Does this face say we have nothing? I think that it does not."

"Yet you aren't telling us what we do have, even though you called us all here to talk to us."

"I called you all here to tell you to clear out and stay away for a while. Even you, Jessica. Sorry, but I need you to be discrete. Don't come by if you don't absolutely need to. Don't come in costume. Don't just jump to the wall, walk down the fire-escape or something. Don't come two at a time. Again, unless absolutely necessary, just don't come at all."

"Why?" both of the Peters asked at the same time. The expressions of Jessica and Ben made it clear they had the same question.

"Because I need to get in touch with a source that likes his discretion. It's not just for his discretion, though. He's paranoid, which means he might try to spot anyone keeping an eye on me, and if he spots you that would be bad. So just clear out, let me do my thing, and I'll get back to you once I have something. In the mean-time, you can stop looking. I've got what I need to find this place."

"That seems a little excessive," Jessica said.

"More than a little," OG-Peter said.

"It's necessary," Gwen replied. "Look, this is the guy I've been trying to get a meeting with for a week now. Thing is, I was offering him nothing, just asking to talk. He didn't go for it. Now, I'm gonna offer him something. When it was a casual chat, it wasn't a concern. But this guy deals in information, in secrets. I can't let him find mine out. I can offer him some he wants, but once he knows I'm selling secrets he'll amp-up the paranoia. It won't be for long. I expect it'll be a few hours, but it might be a couple days."

"This sounds awful shady," OG-Peter said.

"It is shady. But miraculously enough, it's not illegal, unlike hacking the power company, checking police records of ongoing investigations, making fake identities for two people that aren't supposed to exist. Hell, it's worlds less illegal than being a masked vigilante, or had your forgotten that's actually not condoned by the police around here? Everything we do here is shady and illegal. Now leave, and don't bother me until I tell you it's okay to bother me."

OG-Peter stared at her for a long moment, somehow keeping his face perfectly steady. "Alright, Gwen. We'll go."

"You decide for us, now?" Black-Spider Peter snapped.

OG-Peter took a slow breath. "I'll go. But I'll keep my phone on. If there's trouble, call. Despite everything, I'll still come running if you're in danger."

"We all will," Black-Spider Peter rushed to say.

Gwen smiled, then leaned in and wrapped an arm around each of them, pulling them in for the most awkward group-hug ever. Ben waved a hand and smiled past their tense shoulders.

"I'd come too, but I figure you know that without me belaboring the point," Ben said, then left.

Gwen relented and the Peters headed out. Jessica walked into her room, then returned a few minutes later, dressed in street clothes, a bag over her shoulder. "I'll be fine, but do tell me when it's safe to come home. This is where I sleep, you know?

Gwen nodded. "I promise."

"Thanks," Jessica replied, and headed out.

Alone at last. Gwen locked the door, then latched the window shut and pulled the curtains closed. She returned to the computer and restarted it. Holding the proper seven keys at once started it as a special, light-weight, read-only filesystem with a ramdisk for cache, meaning there would be no record and almost no way to hack her, a good precaution considering who she was talking to.

She went to an address she had memorized, an orphaned site on the dark web, almost impossible to find by accident, then entered the passkey and opened up a chat. Twenty people online, more than usual. That was good. This was initially a random message board, with the meaningless descriptor 73AY10T5 as the only thing to recommend it, but it had persisted with a certain subset of the hacker community, and the person she was looking for knew some of those hackers.

Gwen used her traditional handle, GSDS, and got typing. She started with some small-talk, making sure some people remembered her, waiting several minutes before going for the big reveal.

GSDS:: I've got a message to put out.

ZigPig:: Put out, then.

GSDS:: For ConfeZ. Solid proof of new track.

For several seconds, the channel stayed silent. ConFeZ was the handle for a hacker that used to be called the Confederation Zealot. ConFeZ was not a small-time player, and everyone knew that Gwen was offering to sell him secrets. After a few seconds, people said that he'd get the message.

Gwen went to the kitchen, got a soda and a slice of pizza, and settled in to wait. She kept chatting, trying to get people to reveal any new vulnerabilities they'd found, but she mostly just waited. It didn't take long. Twenty minutes in, she got a private message with the address of a private chat, to which she immediately headed.

GSDS:: I was hoping you'd get back to me.

ConFeZ:: You made an interesting claim.

GSDS:: I can back it up.

ConFeZ:: You're not the type to chase the big ones. What are you looking to get?

GSDS:: I need information, and fast.

ConFeZ:: What sort of information?

GSDS:: I need two weeks of data on activities from all the major players in the NYC metro area.

ConFeZ:: That's a big ask. It won't come cheap.

GSDS:: I've already checked SHIELDbreaker, SHIELDwatch, Watchtower, CorpTracker, Anonymous, and the Unlliance, and they've got shit. They're fine for noting something when it happens, and some of them are excellent at making things happen, but they're not comprehensive in their observations. I need the sort of thorough records the Confederation keeps, and I'm willing to pay.

ConFeZ:: With all due respect, you can't afford us. Full data from two weeks could be used to reconstruct data sources. That won't be let out for the price of some street-level tip.

GSDS:: This isn't a tip, this is solid proof.

ConFeZ:: If you had everything, you'd be charging more.

GSDS:: This isn't the entirety, this is just the proof. I know what's happening, but I haven't got a who or a how or a why. But this is solid proof of something you don't even know about yet. That's worth two weeks.

ConFeZ:: Show me a hint of this proof.

Gwen loaded up two photos and sent them.

GSDS:: One of these photos was never published, the other is from the police archives.

For a long while, the chat was silent, just a prompt waiting for her to type, his reply not forthcoming. She bit at her lip, knowing how much she was risking, giving so much to a dangerous hacker that was a part of a dangerous group.

ConFeZ:: We have a lot of unpublished records, but Stacy is purely analog, no digital records of her excess shots.

ConFeZ:: You're Gwen Stacy. That's the only way you would have this unpublished photo. Why would you risk telling me that?

GSDS:: Because you work for a group that is quite dangerous and dislikes exposure. Ms. Garza, you live in Nova Scotia, in a one-bedroom apartment with your dog, Valentine. You know who I am, but if your associates learn that your name is out, it's worse for you than it is for me.

ConFeZ:: How the hell do you know who I am?

GSDS:: I'm good at what I do. Now, I track down supervillains, but I've been tracking people down for a while. I tracked you down two years back, when we first ran into each other. I didn't need anything from you until now.

ConFeZ:: So, blackmail, but also a trade?

GSDS:: Information for information, silence for silence. Two trades, and everyone's happy.

ConFeZ:: I'll agree to silence for silence. As to your evidence, how vast is the conspiracy?

GSDS:: I've not managed to track it far, but there are several components missing from every site I've been to. I just got the police photos from the Lizard's hideout, and there's stuff missing again.

GSDS:: Most of the photos I take never get put in the paper, so they can't know how much I've got proof of. Thing is, I take a lot of pictures, document my targets well. I never got internal shots of the Goblin's lair, so that's the largest gap in my records, but I have extensive documentation of everything else.

GSDS:: In all, it's schematics, parts, and formulas for five major pieces of tech.

ConFeZ:: You implied it couldn't be SHIELD.

GSDS:: SHIELD confiscated everything from lockup, but didn't wipe the records of its existence, just the details of its construction. They have no reason to steal things they can take legally. Also, the stuff taken was always the best, but it didn't prevent anyone else from learning about the tech. It was someone trying to replicate, not control, the tech.

ConFeZ:: And what do you get from the data I'm sending?

GSDS:: I get a supervillain's location, one I haven't been able to track down on my own.

ConFeZ:: I agree to your terms. Here's the data you asked for.

ConFeZ uploaded a file, and Gwen immediately sent her data over as well.

ConFeZ:: Pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Stacy.

GSDS:: Likewise, Ms. Garza.

Gwen waited. ConFeZ ended the chat, and Gwen left as well. She dropped back into the general channel to give a few quick goodbyes—saying goodbye did wonders for long-term relationships, and it paid to have people you could hit up for a favor. Twenty minutes later, she was done with all of that, no longer on any portion of the dark net. She shut down systems one at a time, checking for any hacks. It took over an hour to power her system down entirely, and then another thirty minutes to power it back up without any risk. Then came another three hours of decrypting all her data and the data ConFeZ had sent.

At long last, it was all there, ready to be put together. It took a few minutes to reformat ConFeZ's data to her own mapping system, but only a few. It was well organized, so the translation went smoothly, and then she could load it into her improved mapping system, along with a time-lapse to show what dates and times she wanted. There were lots of movements tracked. The Confederation tracked everything they could, and they could track a lot. ConFeZ may have been their primary contact, but they had hundreds of hackers, all of them masterful at what they did.

There was data on most every activity of any sort that a corporation or government agency might take, as well as occasional bits on criminals and individuals. There were plenty of possibilities that she tagged to look at later, although nothing obvious jumped out. She didn't expect anything obvious, though.

Then she found something obvious: Roxxon rolling four oversized-load trucks from Brooklyn to a facility in the Bronx. The data listed that location as a subsidiary, and Gwen figured the Confederation would know if a place was a subsidiary, even if they didn't give her proof. Time to set up surveillance, plan a little, and then probably run in without really listening to the plan. Peter had never been much for a plan in his heroing, and Gwen doubted his clones were any different.

* * *

After a marathon session of planning that had Gwen up until midnight after staying up the night before, Gwen finally collapsed into bed and slept like a stone. She awoke, muzzy and stiff, to glaring sunlight and an annoying pounding noise.

"Fug," she mumbled, rolling out of the bed and stumbling to her computer. It wasn't her computer, of course, so she picked up her phone. The phone was neither ringing or vibrating, and definitely not pounding. Gwen groaned and tried to brush her hair out of her eyes.

Someone at the door. Except the door was sealed. The window? A Spider knocking?

No, she had locked the window last night, told them all to stop barging in.

She tried to decide if she really had to put on some pants. She wanted to shower before putting on clean pants, but she didn't want to put back on the pants she'd thrown on the floor before bed.

After a short pause, the pounding resumed.

"I'm coming!" she yelled, then pulled a skirt out of the second drawer of her dresser. She hadn't worn skirts in a while, not since swinging through the city with Peter became a very real and chilly possibility.

Leaving her room, she found OG-Peter perched on the rail of the fire escape, knocking on the window frame. Even at a glance, she could tell them apart. She wasn't sure exactly what was different between the three men, but she always knew, in clothes or costume, which was which. They didn't even need to speak, she just knew. She'd said for everyone to come by in the afternoon, since they wouldn't actually move out until dark, which meant he wanted to talk to her privately, that thought made more ominous by what he was holding.

"Good morning," he said, lifting a bag and a carrier with two cardboard cups in it. "Bagel? Latte?"

"Bribery is always a bad sign."

"Yeah," he agreed, still waiting for an invitation.

"Fine," she said, stepping out of the way. "Come on in. Seat yourself."

He hopped through the window and set the breakfast on the counter. He lifted one of the cups and stepped away, looking about the space.

She took the drink he'd left and drank deeply, sighing in relief at the caffeine's promise of clarity. While she spread cream cheese on her bagel, Peter walked past her, looking around the den, looking at her cover photos. Unsurprisingly, he ended up staring at the picture of him failing to save her from falling off the Brooklyn Bridge. No doubt where his mind was.

He looked past the picture, at her. "After this is over, things are going to change. Some things might change a lot. Ben and Jessica seem fine to go their own way. Maybe Peter will too. Whether I'm the real deal or a pricey knock-off, I'm gonna stay with MJ."

"You came by to tell me that you like your hot new girlfriend? Shocker, she's a model, and you're a man."

"That's not what I was trying to say."

"Really? Because it sounded like you said that. You know, we never even broke up. I woke up, cold, alone, and terrified, and when I ran to the one person I thought I could count on you'd already left me behind."

"I didn't mean to leave you behind," he said softly. "I thought you were dead. I looked, I swear I did, but you were gone."

"Well you didn't look hard enough."

"Gwen, I— No. I came here to talk to you about something important. You want to talk about my failures? Here's those: I lost my mind and killed you, then didn't try hard enough to save you and abandoned you. Now, can you please listen to me?"

Gwen took a step back and leaned against the kitchen counter. She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

"MJ is in the dark. She's got no idea, which is why I don't like missing dates. I hate lying to her, but I'm also terrified of telling her. Look how that worked out last time."

"You didn't tell me shit," Gwen said

"Yes, of course. I meant you knowing. I guess, I'm saying this wrong." He dropped his eyes and set his latte on the counter, at the opposite end from where Gwen leaned. "I'm not good at this, but I have to say it."

She stayed silent, letting him collect himself. It was like he said, he wasn't good at this. Peter had never been good at talking. He was good at banter, at saying things carelessly that didn't matter but might dig in a bit. Opening up, though, he couldn't do. He couldn't articulate his feelings the way he needed to, sometimes. Not quickly.

"Let me try to explain this from the other direction. A week after you disappeared, I was refusing to be Spider-Man. I was going to be just-Peter, step away from all that. Then this Shocker guy started robbing banks. Did you read about him?"

"The guy with those electric wrist-things," Gwen answered. She'd read about him, seemed real small-time.

"Well, he robbed a bank every day, didn't seem bothered by the cops, just running through the city unopposed. I saw him rob the third bank, and I knew I had to do something. He robbed nine more banks. Eleven banks in thirteen days."

"So?"

"So he wouldn't have robbed nine more banks if you were here. It's a miracle how well tuned his shocks were, just incapacitating people. Still, sixty-seven people in the hospital, even if none died. You would have found him inside of two days."

"Holy crap," Gwen gasped in shock, "you want to keep working together."

"Don't get me wrong," Peter said, "I don't like you going out there. If I had my way, you'd just do research from safe behind a desk and let me take the risks. Seeing you out there terrifies me like you wouldn't believe. But that's your call, and we both know you've already made that call."

"Yes. I'm going to keep finding villains, and I'm going to keep tipping you off. Since we both knew all of that yesterday, what did you come here to say?"

"Two things. First, I guess, thank you. I mean, it's not fair in any way, but I don't think I would have fought off that symbiote without you. I don't think I could have."

"If you hadn't killed me."

"No!" Peter replied, eyes wide in horror at the thought. "No, before that. The things you said. You... you confronted me when I needed to be confronted."

Gwen stayed silent. Sometimes, not making a quip was more effective, especially when it made Peter stew a bit.

"So, that's the first thing. The second thing, well it's asking a lot. I can hide being Spider-Man from MJ. I've gotten pretty good at it. I can't hide working with me ex all the time."

"You want me to cover for you."

He nodded. "I want you to cover for me."

"Fuck you, Peter."

"Look, I don't want her to know. And—"

"And I don't care if she knows. I don't care if she thinks we're sleeping together, I don't care if she thinks you're Spider-Man. It is genuinely not my problem. Deal with it yourself."

"Deal with it myself? Why are you doing this to me? I—"

"Because you left me!" Gwen yelled. More quietly, she said, "I'm doing it because you left me. Now go away before—"

At that exact moment, the fire-escape rattled.

"Before someone arrives or I truly lose my temper," Gwen finished with a hiss.

Jessica hopped through the window. "Oh, I'm not even the first one here. Didn't expect you, Peter."

Gwen glared. "Didn't I say after dark?"

Jessica gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. "The other two are en-route. Two minutes, tops."

Gwen groaned and walked away. "I swear I said after dark. Hell with you all!"

She locked her door, flopped onto her bed, and decided to just wait them out. Having three clones of an ex-boyfriend seemed to offer a lot of spare chances, but Gwen was having serious doubts about that. As much as it offered options, and as much as she loved having three sexy Parkers in her apartment, the truth was that they were nothing but trouble. They argued, even fought, and she really doubted they'd survive if they all stayed in the same city.

They were too similar to get along, always would be. Perhaps, Gwen mused, it was her place to act as a peacekeeper, to try to unify them. If that were the case, she was most definitely doomed to failure. Instead of trying, she turned on some music and skimmed through the internet laughing at memes, looking at outfits, and hating the prices of wishful-thinking cameras. She most certainly did not go back out until it hit six o'clock, the time they had agreed on the night before.

* * *

"You can't go in there," OG Peter said.

"It's not safe," Black Spider Peter agreed.

"Seriously," Ben added, "we're talking about armed guards here. Armed as in guns."

"And maybe even the symbiote," Jessica added.

"Because it's totally up to the four of you." Gwen patted her camera bag. "I got the exterior shots I wanted, now it's time for some internal shots."

They might have kept arguing, but Ben just shot a splat of webbing at her foot, coating her up to the knee. They all stared at him, although the masks made it hard to say what they were thinking.

"What?" he said. "We gonna argue all day, or just move on with things? Hey, you can all feel bad, but she's not my girlfriend."

Gwen laughed at that, which drew more looks, which she shrugged off. "Do whatever you want."

As they left, she wondered if Ben was siding with her or just being silly. Considering he'd been there the first time she slipped his webs, he had to know she'd do it again. Gwen unbelted, slipped out of her pants, and buttoned up her jacket. The wind was icy on her legs, but she was alright. It was just like going out in a skirt during the winter. Well, except that she was stuck in socks instead of boots.

She'd have to go back for her shoes and pants later. For the moment, she went to the roof access door, let herself in, and headed downstairs. It was locked—they'd swung her roofside, not come in the proper way—but that was no particular impediment. By the time she got downstairs, the door to the building across the way was gone, and there were muffled yells echoing from inside. It would have been cool to have the whole thing, but being stuck following the spiders in actually fit better with the official truth of how she got her pictures.

She took a quick photo, then ran up to the door. She peered inside, and found a tiny room with another missing door on the opposite side, so she rushed forward again and peered in, which was when the staccato cry of gunfire filled the space. Her instinct to duck almost overwhelmed her instinct to get her camera up and start shooting, but both were unnecessary.

She did take a quick picture, displaying the five men webbed down in a room full of monitors showing everything going on in the place. Gwen bit her lip, knowing she wanted the good photos her camera got, but also knowing she wanted all the information she could get. If it had just been a story, that would have been one thing, but this wasn't just a story; that computer was going to be networked, which meant access to research data.

The reality was that, assuming you had physical access, no system was truly secure. There were a lot of elegant hacks that would take time, but she didn't care about elegance, she just plugged in a USB drive and restarted the system, booting from her drive instead of the computer. From there, it was just a matter of loading up the local drives on her own OS and she was running things. Some of it was encrypted, so she couldn't just grab everything, but it was a matter of seconds to control the system as a whole, and a few seconds more to start sending data back to her home system.

She left that program running and ran towards the sporadic sounds of gunfire. The next door was open, then there was a fork. She glanced both ways and found it an easy decision to go towards the door that was ripped off its hinges, rather than the door that was still closed.

Through the doorway, she slid aside and ducked down, making herself small while she tried to get good angles on everything going on in there. Any other time, the spray of gunfire would have left her shaking with terror, but not with a camera between her and the world.

She didn't see a hail of bullets cracking the tiles to her left, she saw Ben disarming one guard with a kick and staggering another with a web-ball to the chest; Jessica taking down a trio of guards with one smooth kick; a dozen men in lab coats on the floor, bound in webs and screaming or still free and trying to scramble away; glass capsules smashed open, with lifeless figures dangling half-out of them, suspended by breathing tubes and cables; a table with some eight-limbed monstrosity split open down the middle, pieces of it set out on glistening steel stands all about.

The two Peters, struggling. Why were they fighting each other, not fighting the guards?

"It's mine!" Black Spider Peter screamed. "It's my life. I won't let you take it from me."

"Calm down," OG-Peter begged, and that same difference in tone was the difference in the fight. He was fighting to stop his doppelganger, but the Black Spider was trying to kill his. For a few seconds, they were evenly matched, and it was clear which side Ben and Jessica would join when they finished with the guards, but the Black Spider wasn't about to let it last that long. He pushed OG-Peter away and sprinted to the far end of the hall, to what looked like an odd shadow from where Gwen stood.

A black cube, shifting ever-so-slightly. She gasped as she realized what it was, but it was far too late to do anything about it. Pausing before the symbiote, the Black Spider yelled, "You won't stop me. I'll get her back, I don't care what it takes."

And with those words he tore a wall off of the cage and let the symbiote wash over him.


	9. Trust

There was a second of silence, four spiders locked in stillness as three looked on one in shock. Men still gave muffled screams past webbing, and a woman yelled something crude, but it all seemed a distant background behind that tableau.

When they moved again, the first few seconds of battle were brutal. The first to act was Peter, the Peter that Gwen was now certain was the original Peter Parker. He leapt at the Black Spider, barely dodged a punch and delivered a solid kick to the side of the head. The black surface of the symbiote rippled with the impact, but the Black Spider didn't even twitch. He grabbed Peter by the foot and flung him away.

Ben and Jessica were just behind, trying to web the black brute to the floor. The blackness that wrapped him surged, and he seemed to grow. The webbing shredded apart.

He caught one of Jessica's incoming webs and tried to throw her by it, but she released it quickly enough that she only stumbled. Ben got too close, and a kick straight to the chest hurled the Scarlet Spider across the room.

The last two photos on that roll showed three spiders down, the Black Spider standing tall. Gwen knew the fight was over.

She dashed out the door, sprinting down the hallway, fingers changing film by instinct even as she ran. She slowed an instant in the security room, skidding past the console and then stepping back to snatch up her USB drive, and then she was out into the night.

Behind her, the cinder blocks about the door sprayed into the street with a horrendous cracking sound. Gwen looked back to see the Black Spider standing taller than he had ever been. The symbiote had layered him thickly with slabs of muscle and drawn his frame beyond human proportion. When he yelled, his voice distorted into a roar. "Gwen!"

The sound thrummed through her bones and stilled her feet even as she willed herself to run. As if running were an option, with that behind her. She laughed, a sickly sound, as she realized her fear was wasteful. Of everyone there, she would be safe. She could just stand there, take some pictures, and get on with things. Her life, he would save.

No, not safe. Safe was the wrong word for what he wanted. It wasn't even a good shot, him standing there looking vaguely irate as dust from the building settled on his shoulders. She glanced aside, a momentary thought of taking a picture of the city, just for some strange inner spite, taking a picture of not-him even as he stood there.

She never got the chance. A blow knocked the breath from her, and she was being dragged up the face of a building. Staring behind whoever carried her, she saw the Black Spider give chase, and found that the symbiote had not merely made him larger and stronger, but far swifter as well. Those symbiote-enhanced muscles sprang with incredible power, far faster than any normal Spider could run.

And then they were swinging, web to web, building to building, Gwen jostled about on the thin shoulder she was tossed across, and the chase changed. Here it was gravity, and his mass mattered not at all. She kept taking pictures as the chase developed. She saw Peter swing past the Black Spider, and then Ben darted by, as the three spiders carried Gwen in a desperate flight across the city. Not that any of those shots were good. They would be blurred beyond recognition, Gwen being jostled about as she was.

The flight was hardest on Jessica, both carrying Gwen and evading the best efforts of the Black Spider to stop them. He shot webbing after them time and again, and she had to twist desperately to evade it. Had she been alone, it may have been easy, but she had to wrestle Gwen out of the way with nausea inducing jolts of activity.

Still, struggle as it was for Jessica, it was more for the Black Spider. He had to fire his own webs to swing through the city, and more yet to try to slow them down, and it wasn't long before he missed a building and had to recover, losing ground.

He stopped targeting them with webs and simply tried to keep pace, but he couldn't. Faster they swung, ever faster, the cars snail-slow below, the buildings a blur on either side. Gwen didn't see how anyone could possibly aim in that desperate race, but Jessica never missed a web. Gwen tried to look ahead, terrified that they might hit something, but when she finally managed to look, there was nothing there. The buildings ahead were distant, and below was naught but water.

The flight seemed to last forever as they arced out over the river. There was no bridge here, no building alongside to cling to, nothing to save them, and she knew they were going to plummet into waters below. That terrible impact flashed into memory and she shuddered, back alongside that bridge, falling and falling and falling again into the depths below, into death, and no one to save her.

But their decent slowed. She looked up from the deadly waters and saw that Jessica had managed it, had flown so far that she could reach the buildings on the opposite shore. They were on a slowing arc again. Too low, though. Gwen's heart stuttered.

Jessica gave a tug, jerking them spastically higher, then launched another web and gained a new peak on that same arc. She again pulled up that strand with main force, and Gwen realized that both webs were still affixed, and that Jessica was going hand-over-hand higher, until they landed at a run on a riverside park in Manhattan. Gwen was again struck in the gut by Jessica's narrow shoulder as she leapt from the ground and got swinging. Behind them, Gwen saw Ben and Peter make the same maneuver, and saw the Black Spider fall short, saw him strike the water like a hammer, watched him disappear beneath the waves.

They stood atop a rooftop, high above the city, seconds later, and Gwen was annoyed to see that she was the only one gasping for breath, and she hadn't even been doing the work.

"We need a new strategy," Ben said.

"And fast," Jessica agreed.

"He took our hits without flinching," Peter said, "and the system at OsCorp won't be usable again. We need some other way to get the pitch right while hitting a high volume."

Gwen tried to speak, but hadn't recovered her breath quite yet.

"He knows that, same as we do," Ben said. "It'll have to be quite a trap, if he's to fall for it."

"We can—" Peter began.

"Get MJ," Gwen finally managed.

"What?" Peter asked, thrown off by the comment.

"He hates the life you made under the name he thinks is his. He'll try to destroy it. Get MJ to safety."

Peter was gone, not even a word as he leapt off the building. Gwen looked at the others, concerned.

"I'll stay with him," Ben said, turning away.

"Fine," Jessica said watching Ben go. She turned to Gwen. "I'll—" She winced, hobbling her step slightly. "Dammit."

Ben stopped, one foot on the rim of the building. Gwen looked Jessica over, then looked down at herself. The crimson and yellow costume hid it, but the blood showed on Gwen's blue blouse.

"Go on," Jessica said, waving Ben off. "I'll be fine. Peter won't."

"He'll be fine for a minute," Gwen snapped. "Ben, help us to, let's see, go seven buildings down, then two buildings left, then find an office that looks deserted. There should be one open on a Saturday night."

"Why, uh, seven and—"

"It's random. He can't predict a random location no matter how well he knows us. Just text Peter the location."

Ben got them to the specified roof, then left the two of them there while he searched up and down the building for a good office. Once he was gone, Gwen insisted that Jessica sit down and let herself be checked over. First checking her pulse—steady and strong—then actually looking for the wounds. Ignoring arguments, Gwen tugged off the top, looking at bare skin and a black sports bra. Blood was smeared all across the right half of Jessica's body, a thin layer that had run with sweat and activity or it would never have spread so far. All seeping from one little wound, a hole in her side, just beneath the elastic of her bra.

Gwen poked it, eliciting a hiss of pain from Jessica. "I think the bullet's still in there."

"Damn," Jessica said. "You're gonna have to cut it out, aren't you."

Gwen nodded, hefting her camera bag. "I have titanium-alloy tools for just that reason."

"Titanium alloy?"

"Did I never tell Peter about that? When I had to remove a bullet before, he wrecked my tongs."

"What'd he do?"

"You're too strong, is all," Gwen said. "Muscle-spasms alone will bend metal, unless it's something special. I mean, ideally I'd get some of the fancy stuff that Stark uses for his toys, or whatever they made Cap-A's shield out of, but titanium alloys are what you can get on the civilian-side."

"Alright," Jessica said. "Once Ben's found a place, but not up here."

"Not up here," Gwen agreed, handing back the top.

Jessica had just finished dressing again when Ben reappeared. "There are a couple offices, but I'm not sure how to bypass the alarms."

"Let's go," Gwen said, and they all went down.

Getting to the window of his choice of the offices, Ben crossed one leg over the other knee, planting his foot on the wall. It made a surprisingly comfortable chair for Gwen to work from. After some moments of study, Gwen pulled her lockpicking tools from the bag. She used a tiny hammer to pound a folded-double strip of metal into the gap, made sure it was touching both contacts on the other side, then tapped a wedge into the middle of the strip of metal, so the window edged up, but the circuit didn't break. Soon, it was a few millimeters wide, and she could slip in a wire and tape the ends to the contacts.

"Alright, just open the window. You can break the clasp and it won't set off the alarm, just make sure this wire stays connected."

Ben shook his head. "You're too good at this stuff, Gwen. Too smart by half."

Gwen shrugged, trying not to grin.

He opened the window, and she slipped in first, then offered a hand that Ben didn't need. He took it anyway, then he helped Jessica who also didn't need help, even while wounded.

At last, they were somewhere safe. Well, relatively safe. There was still the Black Spider to take care of.

"How long until he finds us?" Ben asked, mirroring her thoughts.

Gwen shrugged. "No idea. We'll just have to do what we can. Jessica, sit on that table so I can fix you up."

"Sure thing," Jessica said, wincing slightly as she hopped onto the table and removed her top again.

Ben muttered something as he averted his eyes and left. Both of the girls laughed at him.

Then came the awkward part. It wasn't a matter of just stitching her up. No exit wound meant the bullet was still inside, so she had to actually cut the wound wider and start opening it up to see inside. Swabbing aside blood, she managed to get a look at the copper slug, and then it was a relatively simple matter to remove them with the forceps, so long as it didn't bother her to hear Jessica whimper in pain as she dug into the wound.

Still, it didn't take long to get the bullet out, tossing it down on the polished wood of the table with a clink. Gwen looked up and saw Ben by the door, clearly waiting for her. "What?"

"Peter had a good idea, but he needs a hand."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "What's his good idea?"

"Seriously," Ben said, "it's a good idea. If he just swung in there in costume, MJ would panic, so he just called her and had her meet him as Peter, so now they're coming her by taxi, no way to spot them like that. Problem is, since she still doesn't know about him, he can't just swing up the side of the building. Can you get them through the front doors?"

Gwen glanced at Jessica, scowling.

Jessica grabbed some gauze and pressed it against the cut. "Don't worry about it. I'll be fine."

Gwen knew perfectly well how prone the Former Peters—new band name—were to ignoring their injuries, but she let Jessica stubborn out the pain all the same. It took some wandering, but Gwen found a security box before too long. She finagled the alarm on the box, then opened it.

Ben, standing right behind her, said, "Oh, it's gonna be easy, then?"

Gwen nodded. "Digital system like this is usually integrated. I should be able to do it from here."

She took out her tablet, wired into the panel, and started looking. It took almost fifteen minutes to get the doors ready to open, but she did it, then handed the tablet off to Ben. "When they—"

"I know," he said, rolling his eyes. "I watched you do it, right? Type unlock dash D70 and hit enter, the door unlocks for thirty seconds."

"Then unlock elevator three."

He gave her a blank look. Like he'd said, he'd watched her do it the first time, and it wasn't like he wasn't intelligent enough to repeat simple steps. She headed back to Jessica, who had moved to a chair, sitting back and keeping pressure on the wound.

"Let me get to stitching that up," Gwen said, walking back to her medical kit.

Gwen went back to tools, lifted the still-clamped forceps, and looked at the tiny little bit of copper that had caused the found. "Fuck."

Jessica looked her way. "What's wrong?"

Gwen held out the forceps, slowly turning them to display the bullet. "What do you see?"

"Um, a dented up bullet?"

"A partial dented up bullet, you mean."

Jessica groaned a dropped her head back. "So it hurt so much because it wasn't just a little hole, it's splintered in there and I still have some metal in my side, which is why it hurts whenever I breathe."

Gwen nodded. "I'm sorry, I can't do anything about it, I don't think. Not here. I mean, I can't find the shrapnel without slicing you wide open or using an X-ray, and we don't have an X-ray."

Jessica nodded, then stood up with a groan. As she walked back to the table, she said, "Look, just stitch it up. We can sneak into a dentist's or a vet's sometime once this is over and fix me up properly. For now, I just need to be able to move around."

"You sure?"

"It still works, it just hurts. I can deal with hurting."

Gwen looked at Jessica for a long moment, trying to think of a response. There wasn't one, though. Gwen couldn't remove the fragment, not without going out and risking their lives. Ignoring the pain genuinely was the only answer right then.

At last, Gwen nodded her acceptance and got some sutures out. "Just a warning, these aren't normal sutures. You spiders are too strong for it. Peter ripped his stitches several times when I used fishing line, because his hard skin and powerful muscles can just snap the filament. Well, they're still sutures, they're just an extremely thick gauge. Technically, it's designed for elephants. Not that I'm saying you're fat or anything, I'm just saying you're more like an elephant than anything else."

Jessica laughed sharply, then bit off the sound with another hiss of pain. "Thanks, Gwen. I needed someone to tell me I was letting myself go."

"No, like I said, not fat. Wrinkly, gray, just, you don't really want to know."

Jessica started laughing again, then gasped as Gwen punched the needle through her skin once more. "How is this more painful than getting shot was?"

"I know the answer to that," Gwen told her, "but you don't really want to know, do you?"

"No, I just want you to be done stitching me up."

Gwen drove the needle through again, then started tying it off. "Well, you're in luck, because I'm finished. Now, rinse, disinfect, have some food, blah, blah, blah."

Jessica looked down at the cut, now adequately stitched up, sighing. "So, I'm gonna have a nasty scar, am I?"

Gwen shook her head. "I would. I mean, that's some messy stitching. But Peter's scars are gone already. It'll be ugly for a bit, but it'll probably be gone in a few months."

"Cool."

Just then, a voice came down the hall, a strange echo to it in the empty office. "What is going on?"

"MJ's here," Gwen muttered, then scowled when she saw Jessica's smile. "God, you'd been looking at her for years, hadn't you?"

Jessica blushed and looked aside. "She lives next door and she's an aspiring model."

Gwen rolled her eyes, but did have a little trouble getting angry about that. She had never expected her boyfriend to be blind, especially not since before they started dating.

"First you get me all excited about a date, then you take me to some random office," MJ was saying, "and now you just— Peter, why is Gwen Stacy standing around next to a naked woman covered in blood."

Jessica scowled. "Half-naked, thank you very much."

Gwen just looked at Peter and shook her head. "I'm not telling her anything. This is your problem."

"Tell me what?" MJ asked. She turned to Peter, looking him straight in the eye "What?"

"Um," Peter said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, "see the thing is."

"God, I can't watch this," Gwen said. "I'll tell her just to put end this—"

Peter shook his head. "I'll tell her. I just..."

MJ planted her hands on her hips and stared at him with one of the coldest looks Gwen had ever seen. "Peter Parker, you already dragged me across the entire city, like it was supposed to be a date, but I'm not blind enough to not notice you being worried the whole time, and now you're too nervous to explain to me why you brought me to meet your ex-girlfriend and a half-naked woman with the sort of body I work myself half to death for. You had—"

"I'm Spider Man."

She stopped. "You're, what?"

He jumped and landed on the ceiling, standing normally aside from the whole upside down part. "I'm Spider Man."

MJ blinked, looking around uncertainly. "You're, wait, how can you be Spider Man? This is crazy."

He jumped back down. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but—"

She slapped him, then gasped in pain and started shaking her hand out.

"Sorry," Peter said again, "I should have dodged that, but I thought you wanted to slap me, and—"

"Holy crap," MJ said, "you're really Spider-Man. Wait, you told Gwen, but not me?"

"Uh, the thing is."

She lifted a hand, then just glared and made a fist, shaking it angrily. "I'd slap you again if my hand didn't still hurt from the first time."

Jessica snorted, and everyone looked at her. Gwen realized that the woman had been fighting off laughter for a while, and had finally lost that battle. "What? Am I the only one that thinks this is hilarious?"

"It is kinda funny," Gwen agreed.

"It's not funny," MJ and Peter both snapped.

Just then, Ben stepped into the doorway. "What's funny?"

MJ turned to look, saw a second Peter, and began looking back and forth between the two of them, eyes wide. She backed away. "What's going on here? You're not just Spider Man, you're, you're..."

Jessica was outright laughing now, lying back on the table and just letting loose, holding her side as she laughed through the pain.

"I told you to stay hidden until I told her," Peter snapped at Ben.

"I thought you did tell her."

"I told her I was Spider Man, not everything else," Peter replied, turning from Ben to go try soothing MJ.

"Oh. Sorry." Ben lifted his hand, holding up a cardboard carton of bottles. "I found the fridge. All they had was whatever this Gassosa stuff is and a few tupperwares of questionable age."

"I love those," Gwen said, walking over to grab one of the sodas.

Jessica managed to stop laughing and snatched her top back up, tugging it on as she spoke. "I'll try one. What do they taste like?"

"Why is everyone acting like all this is normal!" MJ yelled.

Everyone stopped and looked at her. They shared a glance, then Gwen said, "For us, it is normal."

"What, you all just work together up in some mysterious office?"

"Nah," Gwen said, "we broke in here. We're hiding from the other Peter, since he's kinda trying to kill us."

MJ's breath came too fast, rushing in and out as she hyperventilated, and Gwen started to feel bad for her comment. Yeah, MJ had stolen Peter away, but Gwen had been presumed dead at the time, so there was a bit of an excuse. Besides, even if MJ had stolen Gwen's boyfriend, the woman didn't deserve to have everything thrown at her all at once.

"Peter," Gwen said, "we're gonna go find a TV and see if there's any news about the Black Spider. Come get us when you've told her what's going on."

With that they left. Ben gestured to follow him and led them to a break room of sorts, if a somewhat mismatched one. The fridge, sink, microwave, and coffee maker made it seem a place for eating, but the seating was all huge, comfy chairs around a low table with a view of the TV. Gwen plopped into one of the chairs, opened her soda, and started sipping.

The news had nothing of interest, but the chairs were enormously comfortable, especially after such a long night. Soon, Gwen was asleep.

* * *

Gwen groaned and pushed out of the chair, immediately regretting that she hadn't found somewhere to lie down. One of her arms was completely limp, gone all to pins and needles from being pinched against the armrest as she slept, and the other was the shoulder that was still stiff from symbiote-affected-Peter punching her off a bridge. That shoulder just plain hurt.

Twisting her arm around gave the sort of pain that always presaged relief, so she kept moving it as she walked. Ben and Jessica weren't in the room anymore, so she headed out the door. She made it into the hall, saw the ladies room, and decided she needed to rinse her face. Flicking on the lights left her squinting against the brightness. Throughout the office, they'd only turned on a very few lights, but the bathroom was all or nothing, and she wasn't at all ready for it.

Once she blinked her sight back, she looked at herself in the mirror, finding her hair a mass that nearly stood under its own stiffness where she'd slept on it. She started the water, ready to try giving herself a little birdbath with the sink. Her best efforts weren't very good, but she didn't look a total mess anymore. At least looking passable, she headed into the hall and went back down to the conference room where they'd been the night before.

Only MJ was there, elbows on the table, head buried in her hands. Gwen paused in the doorway, silent. She heard MJ sniffle back tears.

"What's wrong?"

MJ bolted upright, swiping at her eyes. "Nothing."

"Good, because I thought you might be crying for a reason, instead of just crying for no reason."

MJ scowled. "I'm sure he already told you. He tells you everything."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "He didn't tell me he was Spider Man, I found out on my own. And I just woke up, so I don't know what happened during the night. What's up?"

MJ scowled. "That horrible Venom guy was on TV, and they all went after him together."

"Damnit. They're out there right now?"

MJ nodded. "It's all over the news. I was watching it on your tablet, but I couldn't stand it anymore. Every time I saw him, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. Besides, it's not like we can do anything about it."

Gwen stomped across the room and grabbed her tablet, getting it back to news sites while she walked away.

"Where are you going?" MJ asked.

When Gwen didn't reply, MJ just followed. Gwen went back to the room she had slept in and turned on the TV, leaving it on NY1 while she looked around the net for other sources.

MJ hadn't been lying. There was constant live coverage of central park, albeit without much of an angle. There was a helicopter overhead, but it was staying high, and all of the other cameras were cautiously around the outskirts, just getting periodic glimpses of motion, nothing useful. Central park was too vast to find a few people without a lot of luck and, considering who they were looking for, even more risk.

"Why are they in Central Park?" Gwen asked.

"I don't know," MJ said. "Why not?"

"Because it's terrible ground for them. No good buildings. The trees are something, but they don't give any of those three an edge over the Black Spider."

"Why do you call him that? The news just calls him Venom."

"Venom is an alien symbiote that's forming that black shell around him, the man inside is another clone of Peter, the Black Spider Man from these past months. Didn't he tell you this?"

"Yeah, but he said they move like one person, since they joined."

"They move like one person, but that doesn't make them one person." Gwen set down her tablet, accepting that nobody had anything better than crappy helicopter coverage of shifting trees. "What's their plan?"

"I don't even want to think about him being out there," MJ said.

It was a struggle not to yell, but Gwen kept her voice calm. "That's fine. I don't need you to do anything special, you just have to tell me what plan they made when they left."

"Go fight him, right?"

"Wrong. The only way to neutralize the symbiote is with a pair of sound waves, one around 200 hertz, the other around 17000 kilo-hertz, both at very high volume. It helps if there's a steady pulse of them kicking off for a tenth of every second, out of sync, but that's not needed."

"So, they need a loudspeaker or something?"

"Loud sounds of any sort will mess with it, but it takes a very specific noise to actually weaken it noticeably. So, they had to have a plan for a trap setup. What was their plan?"

MJ dragged a hand through her hair. "Look, they didn't explain everything to me, they just told me to stay here with you." Her eyes narrowed towards a glare. "Peter even told me to do what you said, like you're in charge of me."

Gwen snorted a rude laugh in reply. "As if I'm gonna take responsibility for you. So, sounds like they don't have a great plan, because the news indicates they've been stuck in central park for twenty minutes already. It says he lured them out with threats. How's that?"

"He ripped a bank vault out of a bank for attention—the whole vault as one piece, he didn't break into it—then started trashing police cars, saying that Spider Man didn't dare face him." MJ looked a little sick at the memory. "It wasn't good."

"Yeah, I'm sure that made them all go off half-cocked."

"They had to go!" MJ insisted. "People were gonna die."

Gwen sighed and nodded. "Course, Peter's a hero. Jessica and Ben are heroes too, just like the original. They're gonna lose, though, and then the Black Spider's gonna be living that life. Cain. That'll work."

"Cain?"

Gwen shrugged. "He refuses to take a new name, but I'll not call him Peter, so I'm giving him a new name. Cain and Venom."

"You're thinking of names at a time like this?"

"No," Gwen said, still looking at random things on her tablet, "I'm trying to figure out a plan, but I've got no good ideas."

MJ looked back at the TV, swallowed, and grabbed the remote. The TV clicked off and the room fell to silence. MJ visibly relaxed. "I know it's stupid, but I worry less if I don't have to see the news footage."

Gwen kept working on her tablet. She was digging through the information she'd gotten from the lab, but it wasn't particularly useful. She'd gotten far less than she'd hoped for. The security had been decent, so her automated system had only really gotten entry and exit times from the facility, all associated with badge numbers, but not with names or faces or jobs or activities or anything of use. There were also badge-swipes on several internal doors that shared the security system, but again that told little.

She tossed the tablet down and leaned on the chair, kneading her hands into the soft back, glaring at the blank TV. "Turn it back on."

"No." MJ crossed her arms, still holding the remote. "I'm not watching one more second of that. It's maudlin."

"I need to know where they are so I can go help."

"I thought you didn't have any ideas."

"I have no good ideas, but I have some really bad ones that I know will work, but I have to— actually, no, you can help." Gwen straightened, taking a deep breath, preparing herself for what was to come.

MJ was took a deep breath, as if Gwen were about to ask her to do something difficult, rather than something trivial. "What do you need me to do?"

"Three things: Firstly," Gwen began, digging into her camera bag, "this is the film from last night. If this goes wrong, please send it to the Bugle. But make sure they pay for it, this stuff ain't free."

"If what goes wrong?"

"Secondly," Gwen continued, "this is my tablet, and this program here will control the doors in this building. Clean up the blood and mess, then get out of here and find somewhere random to stay. Probably a coffee shop. Again, in case something goes wrong, you shouldn't go home."

MJ held the bag of film and the tablet, looking worried. "Clean up the blood?"

"Yes, clean up-"

"Spider-Man's blood," MJ said. "Yeah, alright. That would be bad."

"Exactly," Gwen said. "Thirdly, I need you to wait thirty minutes, then call Peter and tell him that I'm making a diversion, and that when Cain leaves, he shouldn't follow. He should use the time I buy to figure out a trap that will work."

"What diversion? How can you make a diversion?"

"Make that four things. Fourthly, don't sound worried to Peter. If he knew what I was planning he'd do something stupid."

"What are you planning?"

"Remember, Cain thinks he's Peter from a bit after he threw me off the bridge and a bit before he met you. He hates you. Me, on the other hand..."

MJ swallowed nervously. "You think you can talk to him? He's crazy!"

Gwen nodded. "Yes, but he still thinks he loves me. I can't keep him busy forever, but I can keep him talking for a while. Once Peter's clear, tell him he has two hours to make his trap."

MJ shook her head. "No way. This is crazy. Idiotic. You're not a superhero."

Gwen pulled her coat on and shouldered her camera bag. "Doesn't mean I can't handle a villain or two. Now, will you do what I told you, or will you let Peter die?"

"He's not going to die," she said, shaking her head in denial. "He's gonna be fine."

"You saw him when he left. He's not that good at hiding his emotions. Did he think he was going to be fine?"

MJ's eyes lowered, her lips twitching with held-back tears, the ones she'd only stopped crying minutes earlier. "He'll be fine."

"If you help me make a diversion. So, you make the call, and I'll make the diversion, and the heroes will come save me at the last second. Right?"

MJ smiled. There were still tears in her eyes, but it was a good smile. She was a model; she smiled for a living. "Right."

Gwen nodded her agreement and headed out.

* * *

Gwen practically dashed up the stairs, out of the subway and towards central park. There were crowds nervously looking towards the trees, as if they could see anything from there. They knew a fight was on, though, and a bad one. It wasn't so much that Venom was stronger and faster than the other spiders, because he wasn't so much more of any of that. The real danger was that they couldn't hurt him.

It was forty minutes in already. She knew Peter's endurance had become superhuman, but it wasn't endless. Ten minutes in, they'd probably switched to more of a tag-team, two on one while one stayed back a bit more, just spraying in webbing and slowing Venom down at key points.

By forty minutes, they were probably all out of webbing, and their endurance was likely replaced by stubborn refusal to give in. She might get angry at him for rushing in headlong, but the truth was that Peter was a hero. He wasn't going to let some danger stop him. The others, she wasn't so sure. Jessica had a touch of it, at least. Ben was colder, though. He weighed every angle, looked at it more like Gwen did, and she had no illusions that she was a hero.

Still, even if she wasn't a hero, she could save the day.

She kept an eye on her phone, sometimes slowing to check the overhead footage, adjusting her course to jog towards where they were. It was taking too long, but she knew she couldn't get there any faster. In the end, she heard them before she saw them. A tree shattering has a very distinctive sound.

Gwen ran off the path, down a hill, up a slope to another path, and then a sprint onto the wall of Belvedere castle. Panting, hands on her knees, Gwen stared across the icy, snow-drifted expanse of Turtle Pond, to where they had finally broken the tree line, in this case literally. Venom had shattered a pair of smallish trees, sending them across the open space as flinders. Peter and Ben were in close, swinging at the brute. Jessica was a distance back, hunched over, holding her side and fiddling with a machine that had a tree-branch driven through it.

Gwen took out her camera, snapped a few pictures out of reflex more than intent, and then began carefully angling the lens. Venom gave a broad sweep, sending Peter and Ben jumping clear, then sent webbing towards Jessica. She jumped clear, and the webbing hit the machine. With a roar and a yank of his arm, he brought the entire machine, about the size of a small car, tumbling through the air to him.

The pictures of him ripping the machine apart, ruining their efforts at a trap, were impressive, but Gwen was more focused on his face. No longer did he look to be wearing a mask. Instead, his face seemed to split apart, revealing a massive fanged maw, almost crocodilian in its extent. Cain was further gone that Peter had ever been.

Throwing down the halves of the machine, facing the three Spiders and roaring, Venom at last turned towards Gwen. She tilted her camera, flashing sunlight off the lense and into his eyes. He blinked and paused, and during that split second of distraction the Spiders attacks. Peter came in low, kicking the side of a knee while Jessica shoulder checked his side and Ben kicked up towards the back of his suddenly-falling head.

This trio of blows seemed to actually stun Venom, and the Spiders capitalized, raining down blows, but the whole in his defenses lasted only an instant. He punched out and caught Jessica right where Gwen had stitched her up, then rushed at Ben and more trampled him than actually hit him. Peter managed to snag Ben with a web and jerk him free, and the fight once again on even footing, where Venom had the clear advantage.

Gwen flicked light at him again, and this time he looked and she saw him straighten, knew he had read what she had written.

Big letters on a sheet of paper would have been a struggle for anyone at that distance, but she remembered well what Peter had said about the symbiote improving him. He'd seen the Lizard knitting together, seen the flesh twitching towards regeneration. He could read a sign at three-hundred paces.

'We need to talk,' the sign read. 'If we don't talk now, we never will, and you will regret it so long as you live.'

She raised a second sign. '81st St Station. From there to somewhere quiet.' As he had read it, her time there was done. Snapping a last pair of pictures, she tried to get clear before the others noticed that the woman on the castle was Gwen Stacy.

She maintained a steady jog the rest of the way through the park, then out past the museum and into the subway. It took some effort to push through the crowd outside the subway. Everyone around central park seemed to have bogged down, staring into the trees, listening for the occasional thunder-crack of a tree shattering.

In an instant, the struggle disappeared, the crowd parting as if by magic.

Seeing them flee, Gwen stopped halfway down the stairs, looking back just as a massive black figure leapt across the street. She raised her camera, snapped a picture of Venom descending on her, and then he had scooped her up, cradling her close to his chest. Large as he was, he actually carried her better than Peter ever had, albeit not while webslinging. No, he kept going right on down, sprinted across the station, and then dove across the tracks, cutting it so close that she felt the wind of the train snapping at her heels.

In the city above, the Spiders were faster, but down there, with no space to swing, the symbiote could simply stretch Cain's muscles to the limit, leaving him free to sprint faster than Peter, Ben, or Jessica could manage.

Gwen tried to recall the route, but the swift turnings soon confused her, and then they rushed upwards, bursting through a grate and somehow coming up inside of a building. It was an ugly little space, little larger than her room at home. A dirty cot sat in one corner, a table with the tools for mixing web fluid in another. The floor had once been white tile but was now more brown than any other color. The door looked to be welded shut.

This was where he had been staying, then. Gwen had seen the lairs that Ben and Jessica kept, and they had both been far more livable. This place was a step down from prison.

He settled her to the ground gently, and as he lowered her he shrank in on himself. The blackness settled to only a thin layer across the skin, then pulled back, revealing Cain's face. How had she ever even thought them similar? That face wasn't simply worn down, carved with pain. Those eyes burned with a rage far fiercer than Peter had ever held, far fiercer than he had the capacity for.

As he looked at Gwen, the anger slowly slipped away. A weight of sadness drew down his eyes, tugged his lips into a painful line, engraved creases in his young flesh.

"This isn't what I wanted," he said, voice barely audible.

"What did you want?" Gwen asked.

"You!" he said immediately, a momentary flare of fire in his eyes. That faded back to sadness swiftly. "I know I won't get what I want. I understand, but I can't just stop. They took it all away, you see that, don't you?"

All Gwen saw was a madness creeping in around the edges of a man she once cared for, drowning him. "How will killing them help?"

"If they're gone, I can try again. I can try to change things. Somehow, I can make it the way it was always meant to be. You and me together, the way we're supposed to be." He stepped closer, hands reaching for her shoulders. She shrank from him and he stopped, curling his fingers into painful knots as he restrained himself. "If you would only come with me, that's all I need. You and nothing else, that's all I need."

That wouldn't have been enough for the real Peter, she knew. He had cared for her, she was certain of that, but not to the exception of the world. He wouldn't have even dreamed it. He would have said that he would follow her anywhere, that he could make a life wherever she wanted to go, but he wouldn't have just abandoned his life entirely. He would have stayed Spider Man, he would have gone to college, he would have moved on if she died. Like he had.

Even that momentary thought, a flashed memory of MJ and Peter kissing in his bedroom, sent a bitter flare through Gwen like a shot of fire up her spine, but the bitterness swiftly faded. There was more to her than that, more than just her and Peter.

Her eyes widened and her lips slipped apart in shock. "There's more to it."

"Gwen, what is it?" He moved closer again, uncomfortably close, struggling not pull her to him. "Please, talk to me. Say that you hear me when I tell you that I love you."

She smiled softly, sadly. "I see it now. You didn't understand, that's why this all happened."

"What didn't I understand?"

Gwen shook her head, waving a hand dismissively. "No, Cain, not you. I named you, by the way. I guess I was prescient, or perhaps my subconscious was simply a few hours ahead of time. Cain, who would kill his brothers to earn the favor of God. You're Cain, but I'm not God. But you don't understand that, do you?"

"Gwen, please, just tell me what you're talking about."

Gwen leaned back, resting against the wall. "Not you, Cain, him."

"Who?"

"The Symbiote. The one they titled Venom, as though he were toxic." Gwen smiled and waved. "Hi there. Yeah, I'm trying to talk to you."

The blackness rippled, all across Cain's body, but Cain paid it no heed.

"Stop talking past me!" he yelled.

"He's not important," Gwen said, making sure not to look anywhere near Cain's eyes, not to give him even a hint that she might be talking to him. "Well, that's not fair. Peter believes in second chances, even for a brute like Cain, I suppose. I suggest you give him one, a second chance. But first, we need to explain what you did wrong."

"Stop ignoring me!" Cain screamed, and with the scream he swung. His fingers curled into a deadly fist, a brutal, deadly swing, curving towards her jaw, until it stopped mere inches from her. Cords of black sinew bound him tight, the rippling symbiote knotting him in place.

"No!" he roared, and the blackness twisted about him, dragged him from her. "No, you won't steal her away, not again. I've killed you once and I can—"

The blackness covered his face, enwrapping him entirely. The surface of the ropy expanse of glistening black seemed to boil, shifting about the floor, sliding away from Gwen. She had expected something swift, but this wasn't swift. The blackness thrashed, careening across the floor.

It shifted away, occasional flashes of pale flesh breaking the blackness. It hit a wall, caving in the brick, and then began an awkward, stumbling rush in Gwen's direction.

She moved away, but it twisted in her direction. Shrieking, Gwen dove aside, rolling into a corner. Just past where she had been standing, the steel cot was reduced to a twisted mass of torn metal and shredded fabric.

More and more, Cain tore his way from the blackness, until she could see his rage-worn face screaming in unthinking anger.

The thrashing of the fight sounded a hundred times louder than it should have, a deafening rumble of bricks cracking and metal tearing as it tore about the room.

Gwen ran to the door and tried it, but the welds would never be broken by her strength. She looked to the center of the room, where a drain had been widened to allow entry to the sewers below, a horrid stench rising from below to fill the place. She edged towards it, but the struggling mass of Cain and the symbiote flailed towards her and Gwen pulled back into a corner.

Cowering there, Gwen realized she had nowhere to run. No way out. Laughing softly to herself, she pulled out her camera, wondering what the world would think if they found a second posthumous photograph of the symbiote slaying her.

"What a way to go," she muttered, taking pictures of the flailing mass. Moment by moment, Cain fought down the symbiote more and more. It seemed impossible that he could have overwhelmed it, yet she was seeing it herself.

Standing at the heart of the room, knotted about with ropy black strands, Cain stood tall, reaching down to rip at the symbiote, tearing it away from him, peeling it off. As it was torn away, it took chunks of flesh along, shredding him as much as he shredded it, yet he didn't seem to notice the pain.

The symbiote was torn away until it didn't even reach his waist, and then it began to subside of its own, sloughing off on broad strips, until a torn mass lay about him. Bloodied but still strong, Cain stood looking at Gwen, eyes hard.

"Nothing," he said, "nothing will take this from me. Not Peter, not some symbiote, not even you."

Gwen blinked her eyes, insisting that the fear wouldn't start her crying, that she wouldn't let him see that. She glared at him, making him see her anger. "Take what? Your moment of villainy?"

She raised the camera and snapped a picture. "Look at that one later. See what you've become. See what you did to lose everything you ever wanted."

He walked closer, glaring down at Gwen where she cowered. "Oh, I'll have what I wanted. Nothing matters but you, and I'll have you. I'll master that mewling beast, and I'll have it remake you. I will have what was mine!"

Gwen snorted a laugh. "Nothing was yours. Even were you Peter, I was never 'yours'. That's not the way it works. This isn't some medieval passing of a daughter like property. Nothing was yours."

"Are you still talking? I've already accepted that you aren't the woman I remember. She died. You're probably just another clone." He laughed and began to smile. "Yes, why didn't I see it? You're a clone too. I'll deal with you, and then I'll find the real one."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Come now, even you can't believe that."

"Oh, I get it, you're still trying to buy time." He smiled, cruelly. "Nobody's coming for you, clone."

He sneered down at her and Gwen stared up, knowing he was right. Silence filled the space at last. No thrashing symbiote, no roaring Cain, no words left for Gwen to say, and in the silence a sound echoed up from below.

"Gwen! Where are you?"

Her eyes widened and Gwen yelled back,"Peter, I'm—"

"No!" Cain screamed, flicking a wad of webbing with a twist of his wrist. The webs smeared her lips, stuck to her teeth and tangled her tongue, leaving her gasping for breath.

Cain spun about, as if searching for something, and then seemed to realize there was nothing to look for. He turned that evil glare back to Gwen and kicked at her. She flopped aside and his foot only barely caught her side, but even that brush was enough to toss her against the wall and knock her breath away. As she struggled to get enough air in through her nose, huddled on hands and knees, unable to move even though she knew she had to, Gwen knew that it was over.

But the blow never came. She caught a breath at last and looked up. Behind Cain, pinning his arms in a steel-hard grip, stood Peter, costume torn and dirty from his own rush through the sewers.

"Not today," Peter said. "Not ever."

Cain tried to break free, but Peter bested his every motion. This was it, the final moment, the end of this story. Gwen lifted her camera for that final picture, Spider Man holding a bloodied madman down.

Cain snarled, glaring back at Peter. "What, no quip? No snide remark left?"

"Not for this," Peter said, voice cold. It was the first time Gwen had heard anger from Peter to match the anger Cain had shown all day. She had been wondering where the symbiote had found that deep well of rage, and now she knew.

As if her thoughts summoned it up, the symbiote began to twitch, and then to flow. Peter glanced down, saw the blackness moving beneath him, and leapt away, releasing Cain in his instinctive rush to escape the symbiote.

Peter didn't understand what was going on, he still thought the symbiote was aiding Cain. Cain knew better, though. Freed again, he looked across the small space, then dashed at the door. He tucked his shoulder, hit the steel door and burst through it.

Gwen tried to yell, to tell Peter to go after him, that she was safe, but it was all just muffled noise. Instead, he crossed the space and snatched her up, running along a wall to get her clear without approaching the symbiote. She struggled, thrashing in his arms, managing to spoil his balance as they entered the hallway. He had to stop and lift her again.

He paused a moment. "We've got to get out of here, Gwen."

Even as he spoke, he grasped the webbing across her lips with both hands and carefully tore it, freeing her to speak once more.

"No," she said immediately.

"No? But—"

"You don't understand," Gwen said, twisting out of his grip and rushing back. He was there in an instant, standing in the door way and blocking her path. Beyond them, the blackness had pulled itself together, a little mound of shadow in the midst of the light.

"What are you doing, Gwen?"

"Trust me, alright?"

He looked at her with doubt, but he finally stepped out of her way, keeping a cautious eye on the blackness. "Don't go near that thing, Gwen."

She smiled and stepped up beside him, looking to the blackness. "You're listening, then?"

The blackness wobbled, rippling like water on a windy day.

"I know you can hear me. I'm certain of it. I'm also certain that you can reply."

The dark mass twisted, then slipped aside, reaching a wall and growing up it as though it were creeper vines enveloping a building. The blackness resolved into strands like taut cable, layered over each other time and again, building a meager simulacrum of a human face.

"Yes," it said, the word a rough, barely comprehensible sound. It shifted and spoke again, more clearly. "I can."

"Good," Gwen said.

"What's going on?" Peter asked.

"I wonder that too," the symbiote said. "You told me you understood. Explain what you understand."

"It took me far too long to figure it out," Gwen said. "But I did, at long last, I think."

She stepped past Peter, fully into the room but not yet over to the symbiote. "Let's see, where to begin? I don't know what you are precisely, or how you do what you do, but I did realize one thing: you've not been sentient long. Peter recalled that you had killed the other humans you tried to bond with, which means you could keep memories, yet you had no other memories. Whether you're something man-made or something extra-terrestrial, you're new to this sort of thinking, this sort of emotion."

The symbiote let out a long "Ah" of breath. "Perhaps, perhaps that is so."

"The problem is that, when you met Peter, you suddenly experienced it all in a rush. You didn't start with simple things and build upon them, you had all of a life thrust upon you. I suspect you loved it, but didn't truly understand it, and that's why you made the mistakes you did."

From Peter came a murmur, from the symbiote a rough pair of words, both at once. "Killing you."

"Oh," Gwen said, then shook her head. "No. I mean, sure, but I meant the clones. You see, I think that someone was experimenting and gave you something to work on so they could study what you could do, and you tried to recreate what you lost, to craft a new person. The first one you made was Cain, and you tried to make him a man with all the love and passion you remembered.

"The problem was, that love and passion wasn't balanced in him. It drove him mad. You saw that swiftly, so you moved on to another attempt, and this was Ben. You tried to build his rational mind strong enough to hold his emotions in check, but he lacked the same verve you recalled."

"I remember none of that," the symbiote said. "I remember so little, except for the pain."

"Yes, of course," Gwen said, more softly, as though she were speaking as much to herself as to them. "They would have kept you in that sound cage, with it on most of the time. It disrupted your structure, so you wouldn't remember much of what happened. So, Cain and the Ben, later Jessica. I'm not sure why she came out as she did. Maybe they gave you a woman, maybe you were trying to craft me directly, who knows. The important thing is that, if we know what you did wrong, we know what you can do right."

"I don't understand," it said.

"The truth is that we don't ever get a moment back." She looked at Peter, smiling sadly. "I don't have Peter, now. I tried to have some little piece of that with Cain, and it was a mistake. It only made him worse, only left me feeling all the more what I'd lost."

"You make it seem hopeless," the symbiote said.

"The very opposite," Gwen replied. "That the past doesn't hold us is the hope of humanity. The joy you felt, the love and the kindness, that wasn't unique. You started at the top of it all, and it confused you, but it isn't the end of things. The problem is, you were trying to just rebuild that instant. You have to build a new life. Not Peter's life, but a life of your own. You need to give it time."

"Time. How much time am I to try to give it? What sort of life am I to build? Nobody else survives, and those four are barred to me, or would you smile if I took one?"

"You're speaking right now," she said. "Thinking, feeling, living. No man within."

"Look at me," it said, glancing downward. "I'm a thing of tangled string, a twisted beast. I step outside, they'll cut me down. What life is that?"

"I've seen you hide in other colors, I've seen you take other shapes. You built muscles and sinews and every part of a man, you can build more. You need a scaffold? Fine, we'll steal you a mannequin. You'll learn to walk about as a man, and then you'll start your own life. And yes, it might take time, but it will be wonderful, so long as you keep trying."

The symbiote turned its head, the motion disturbing with how the rest of its form stayed so still. It looked to the torn floor where it had fought against Cain. Blood spattered the cracked cement, scattered pieces of the ruined cot lying amidst the destruction. "I understood him. That rage, it made sense. It seemed so natural."

"A lot of things are natural," Peter put in. "Rage and joy, both are natural, and both have their places. So too sadness, worry, love, and hope. It all has its place."

"It all has its place," the symbiote said softly.

"If you are willing to work for it," Gwen said, "you can build a life, find a place for yourself."

"On my own, though."

"What?"

"On my own," it said again. "Oh, come now. Am I to stay in your apartment? Move in with Aunt May?"

"It needs to be your life," Peter said softly. "You saw the three of them. Ben and Jessica, they decided to make lives of their own. Cain won't accept that."

"And I can't end up like him." The symbiote's voice had clarified as they spoke, until it was almost fully human, with all the nuance to convey a subtle sadness as it spoke of Cain.

"You won't," Gwen said. She glanced at Peter, seeing the calm confidence in the way he stood, knowing that he would be with her on this. "You may need to find your own place, but you won't be alone. You have my number, and Peter's, and we'll always answer. You may not live there, but my door will be always open to you."

The symbiote stayed silent. Peter stepped forward and held out a hand. "Come on, let's go find you a mannequin."

The symbiote reached for Peter, but Gwen stepped up, stopping them. They both looked to her.

"What is it?" Peter asked.

"I have a question," Gwen said.

"Ask it," the symbiote said.

"I've been thinking, thinking about when I fell off the bridge."

"We all think about that." The symbiote's rough voice was pained, and Peter looked down, away from Gwen's eyes. "It was all that Cain thought about."

"Not about the moment, but about the aftermath," Gwen explained. "I survived, and I shouldn't have. I was wondering, is it possible that you somehow saved me?"

"How?"

"I don't know. Another symbiote? Perhaps you did some mitosis thing, divided and protected me. Something had to save me, and the three of us were all that was there."

"I know that my webbing missed," Peter said. "I didn't save you."

Gwen looked to the symbiote.

It slowly shifted from the wall, moving towards her awkwardly. "I could try to determine. It may hurt, but I will be careful and swift."

Gwen held out a hand, and the blackness lashed to her, then flowed across her. Gwen shivered, trying to suppress a thrill of fear as the cool darkness enwrapped her. It slid up her arm, coated her body, enveloped her head and covered her legs. For a bare instant she was in total darkness and instinctive terror flared up, and then the symbiote fell away. It an almost-human figure once more.

"Well?" she asked.

"I'm not certain," it said.

"Not certain?"

"There is something there, as though I did affect you, but it's not possible. Whatever mended your bones, it's gone now."

"So it was a symbiote that saved me?"

"Had I mended you, I would still be there, intertwined with your cells," it said. "Still, the changes to your body, the way your ribs and back were healed, those seem as I would have healed them."

Her ribs and back had broken, and she didn't even have a scratch to show for it. Gwen took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but it did little for the panic that was settling at the back of her mind. "Another symbiote."

It tried a smile with only moderate success. "Perhaps it will be agreeable as well? I did come around, once you convince me to."

"Yes, perhaps." Gwen managed a smile, then looked to Peter. "A mannequin, then?"

"Yeah, but don't you have somewhere to be?"

She looked at Peter in confusion, then her eyes widened as she realized what day it was. "Shit!"

* * *

Gwen opened a heavy wooden door and stepped into a courtroom that looked every bit as respectable and old as she had imagined it might, with wooden barriers and seating and massive elaborate seals hung on the walls to declare its authority.

"See, totally irresponsible," were the first words from her mother's lips.

"You are thirteen minutes late," the judge said, "and you look to have halfway-destroyed whatever that is you're wearing, Ms. Stacy. This is not the way you wanted to begin your day. You're lucky your lawyer was able to convince me to wait this long."

Gwen glanced at the man she had hired, smiled at him, and limped to her seat.

Her lawyer opened his mouth, but the Judge raised a hand to cut him off. "Perhaps you can explain yourself. I know your attorney didn't know where you were, so it'll have to be you, and if you aren't convincing I won't be very likely to grant your request for emancipation."

Gwen took a few more breaths, trying to slow her breathing down, and finally spoke once she was sure she could. "I was photographing a supervillain out in the park and he kidnapped me. It was on the news."

She lifted her camera bag. "After this is over, hopefully I'll be able to get a few more pictures into the paper."

"Yes, your job," the Judge said. "Taking pictures of Spider Man. Not the safest of jobs."

Gwen nodded. "Not the safest, but one I'm good at. Your honor, as my mother refuses me access to my father's accounts so long as I insist on staying in New York City, the only place I've ever lived, I need to find means to support myself. I have a job, so I do it."

The judge sat back, and Gwen's attorney leaned down to whisper to her. "Judging by his expession, that was a lot less bad than I thought it would be. I'll bet you get the emancipation, but this is also where some of the property is going to be decided, and that's less clear-cut. Still, I'm more hopeful than I was a few minutes ago."

Gwen sighed in relief at the words, tension flooding out of her. She sank into the seat, just letting the word sink in. Emancipation. Her own life. That would be good.

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _I hope everyone enjoyed this installment of Gwen Stacy's Detective Service._

 _Honestly, this last bit didn't work quite as well as I wanted. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed writing it and think it's a good story, but I also suspect that_ _trying to write my own alternate-universe version of the Clone Saga mixed in with a revamped Venom storyline was a bit much for me. I wanted the overall story to have more of Gwen being an investigator, and I feel like this one went more towards the action/soap-opera end of things._

 _My doubts aside, I had fun and I hope you did too. Not sure when I'll write another one of these, but hopefully you'll come back and read that too when I do._


End file.
